Admittedly I wasn't expecting much in the first place as this is The Asylum we're talking about, but horrors when done right do have potential to be fun regardless of any reputations. Sadly, The Amityville Haunting was every bit as bad as I'd feared and worse. An obvious starting point would be the production values. I know it's low budget, but that shouldn't be an excuse to not put any effort in. The Amityville Haunting looked as though it didn't even try. The special effects look as though they were made last minute and as if they only had 5 minutes to work on, while the photography is so slipshod it is enough to induce an epileptic fit. The sound effects and music are over-bearing and not sensitive at all to what is going on. The cheese that the dialogue has is enough to fill a cheeseburger, and there is no natural flow. The story has no atmosphere, no suspense and no surprises, in the end it is turgid, thoroughly predictable and emotionally stillborn storytelling. The characters suffer from being obnoxious and from not being developed very well at all, the direction is flat and the acting reads of do what you want to do and we'll just shoot it. All in all, cheap, amateurish and just bad. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Please note: I didn't realise THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING was produced by The Asylum before I purchased it, otherwise I might have had second thoughts. This turns out to be a found footage twist on the whole AMITYVILLE HORROR franchise, which inevitably rips off just about every found footage movie in existence.

The main "inspiration" behind this film is, clearly, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, although this movie makes that film look like a masterpiece in comparison. Everything about it is horrible: the acting, the style, the distinct lack of a story, in which the writer just throws everything into the mix in an attempt to make something stick (nothing does). So we get ghostly kids, intruders, doors opening on their own, murders. It's all ludicrous.

The film's main character is a kid, and about half the running time seems to consist of him pointing the camera at the floor while his parents argue; this doesn't make for a good use of screen time. Instead, I was bored witless by it. The only thing that kept me watching was the bad acting of the father, which was pretty amusing. There's quite a bit of incident in the last five minutes (none of which makes much sense) but it comes far too late in the game to make THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING an interesting film.

Where to start? How about with several huge factual errors? The real Amityville house is located on the lake front in a tony New York suburb, and NOT in a middle-class neighborhood. The real Amityville house most recently sold for upwards of $900,000 and would not be purchased as a last resort by a family who "couldn't afford anything else." And, contrary to what the movie will tell you: since the tragic DeFeo murders and subsequent occupancy by the huckster Lutzes, a number of families have lived there for years at a time and reported nothing out of the ordinary.

Having said all that: if you're looking for a cheap, no-budget (this IS The Asylum) horror movie, you could do worse. The "camcorder" plot device makes the movie seems a lot less cheap than it is, and the acting isn't too terrible (although the father is such a Grade A jerk, you begin hoping for his premature death -- James Brolin he ain't). The plot is predictable, with only one minor (and I mean minor) surprise at the end. And with all its faults, it's still a better movie than Amityville 3-D.