Each of this series’ follow-ups is more forgettable than the previous. In this fourth outing, the budget could not afford the legal pursuits occasioned by using this infamous house. That is why the producers have decided to start a new trend. From 1989 to this day, they will take pleasure in taking random objects from the original Amityville home and make them end up in arbitrary locations where a family just happens to move into. From that point on, we get our share of dialogue, habits, manifestations, wounds and even murders.
Lamp, church furniture, clock, mirror, doll house; every pretext is good to extract a bit more money from a franchise that only worked because it pretended to reproduce a true fact. It was an even bigger lie than The Blair Witch Project!
Therefore, this small family on vacation in a large, vaguely lugubrious, home have been given the task of consoling us of the loss of the only thing that kept this series together. Each of the characters, exception made of Amanda (Zoe Trilling), has tested my patience to the extreme. The older actors picked up this challenge using their melodramatic attitude towards everything that comes at them but the two children, especially the oldest (mostly because of his face, his behaviour and his hair cut), are the reason why I despise this film.
Very few things need to be underlined other than a vicious battle between the oldest child, a possessed chainsaw and his senile grandmother (the second most hated character in the film). Only one person dies and because the cause of death was tetanus, you shouldn’t rent this film for its violence. To laugh at the little Brian, his striped shirt or the ridiculous finale would be the ultimate reasons to do it.
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