The results are a disturbing mixture of paranormal ghost story and psychological unease.
70
Village VoiceNick Schager
Village VoiceNick Schager
Whether it was all a haunting or a hoax is left unanswered, but the film leaves little doubt that Amityville's greatest source of evil was, fundamentally, parental in nature.
63
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
The film is a tender character portrait rooted in deep curiosity and sympathy for its subject.
The blurring of fact and fiction has been a part of the Amityville saga since it became public, but for Lutz there's no gray area in his memories, whose power is undiminished.
Walter has the case down cold and arrives at suitably ambiguous conclusions about terrors both real and suggested, but he gets there through a mix of dimly lit interviews and ominous underscoring that wouldn’t be out of place on an episode of "Unsolved Mysteries."
This documentary plays like an extended episode of “Unsolved Mysteries,” deficient as it is in stylistic zeal, investigative spirit and plain old scares.
40
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Lutz, who was a boy when his family fled the Long Island home, is full of belligerence in this chronicle of his family’s alleged run-in with a ghoulish home where a murder had occurred.