I really dug this so I was amazed to come to the IMDb and see how low the rating is. I guess people see the Amityville name and expect a big budget studio production like the Ryan Reynolds remake so it bums them out when they're offered up a low budget movie instead. I have no idea where all the hate is coming from because I enjoyed seeing a ghost story that didn't just have a series of pointless jump scares and no story. The movie actually tried to tell a story and at times it played kind of like a drama with the deep issues of the lead character. Looking up the real story of the DeFeo family and the indians on the land in Amityville it looks like this movie stayed pretty close to the truth. Some of the back stories of the inmates reminded me of real life people like the female inmate who seems to be based on one of the Manson family girls. Some of the dialog was really deep with discussions about religion and death going on between characters which I thought was unusual for a low budget flick. You don't often get much philosophy talk in films made for twenty thousand dollars! The shootings at the end were realistic too and quite startling. Yeah there were some false notes like one or two of the performances weren't the best because I guess you don't get Hollywood actors for this budget but overall I was interested in finding out how the story was going to be resolved and I thought the ending was quite unexpected and shocking. An under rated movie for sure.
Review of The Amityville Asylum
