My Amityville Horror (2012)

Movie Info

A picture of a perfectly screwed up family

In 1975, George and Kathy Lutz moved in to a house on 112 Ocean Avenue which a little over a year before had been the site of a horrible mass murder.  The Lutz’s experience in the house was chronicled in the bestseller The Amityville Horror:  A True Story and The Amityville Horror which became a series of films.  George and Kathy Lutz also had three children with them Daniel, Christopher, and Melissa.  This is Daniel’s story and how the events of the twenty-eight days in the house have changed his life forever.

Directed by Eric Walter, My Amityville Horror is a documentary which looks at the events of the days in “the Amityville Horror” home and shows Daniel Lutz’s life today.  The movie was met with moderate reviews and made a lot of screenings at horror festivals.

Daniel Lutz and the house that changed his life…

I always found The Amityville Horror interesting in that it was a very modern haunted house story.  The whole horror behind the story was increased by the very true murders in the house by Ronald DeFeo, Jr.  Regardless what happened in the house, the Lutzs committed to it…and they their children also were committed.

With this commitment, the movie sees Daniel Lutz these many years later and shows what effect fame and infamy can have a on a person.  I am not totally dismissing what he said occurred, but to subject a nine or ten year old to something so horrific and tell him what he saw over and over again has to mess a kid up.  I’m sure he does believe in it.  At one point he is asked if he’d take a lie detector test…it however wouldn’t work because if you don’t believe you are lying, you aren’t lying.

If Daniel thinks Lorraine Warren is weird, that says something.

The movie does suffer a bit from miss direction.  I feel that it really should have focused on Daniel Lutz, but interviews with media that covered the event and other tangent people not directly associated with Daniel causes the documentary to drift (though I did like the visit with famed paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren who was recently the subject of The Conjuring).  He mentions medical records, priests, and others in his testament of what occurred, and I wish the filmmakers had made an effort to seek out some of this information.  What happened in and around the house is common knowledge…give more of what we didn’t know!

Freaky ghost kid, but doesn’t add anything

My Amityville Horror is probably only good for those quite familiar with the story.  You don’t learn much more about “what happened” and what you do hear is what was experienced by a ten year old who was being subjected to events that were too much for him.  The film is a better case study for what being in intense public scrutiny can do to a kid.  Expect more documentaries twenty years down the line when many of these reality-show kids grow-up and talk about the effect it had on them…My Amityville Horror is a great example of what My Honey-Boo-Boo Childhood will look like in thirty years.

Related Links:

The Amityville Horror:  A True Story

The Amityville Horror (1979)

The Amityville Horror (2005)