JB & The Chop Do: Amityville – A New Generation (1993)

Hello! Here we are again, ready to rock and roll with another entry into the greatest franchise of all time! That may or may not be true whatsoever because most of these movies have been absolutely shit but we press on and record our data for future generations of movie watchers. Will Amityville 7 be any good?? Should you rush out to your local internet store and spend your hard earned money on it??? Should you sell your prized antique pocket watch or do sex for money to get it????? Let’s see….

SYNOPSIS: An old mirror from the haunted Long Island house finds its way into a photographer’s family where the evil soon manifests itself to cause more terror and mayhem. – via IMDB

P.S. My part will contain big spoilers.

Let’s start this off by saying that the answer to all of those questions is a big fucking NO. Apparently this thing was made in 1993 but I don’t know what kind of film stock they were using because 90% of this movie is blurry and orange, the graphics are absolutely garbage and the 90s hairdos are things of misery. Even bald Terry O’Quinn needs a hair makeover and he barely has any. By now we’ve suffered through a movie about a possessed lamp. a possessed clock and – fuck my butt – this one is about a possessed mirror…. what’s next?? A possessed doll house????? Coming next week: Amityville Dollhouse.

So, this schmuck character named Keyes Terry of all things is a photographer by trade and he lives in a loft so we know he’s artsy fucking fartsy and he has a rather good looking wife or girlfriend. One day they are off eating scones and drinking tea like assholes and he starts taking picture of this homeless bastard sleeping in a box out on the sidewalk. For some reason, he leaves the shop, goes over to the bum and gives him ten dollars. In response, this filthy vagabond pulls a shiny fucking mirror out of his box and gives it to Keyes. OK. Nice writing! SPOILER: Guess what????? The dirty fucking vagrant is HIS DAD and also the son from Amityville 1 and 2 that killed his whole fucking family!!!! WHAT??? Apparently, it is revealed, he was released from the insane asylum when Ronald Reagan made budget cuts to “insane asylum funding”. Also, apparently, he knocked up some broad even though he was in an insane asylum the last 20 years. Also – his last name is Bronner and not DeFeo and his only possession is a mirror from the house that blew up at the end of number 3. COME ON!!! SHIT ON THIS!!!

If I had to relay anything positive about this movie it would be this person named Lala Sloatman. She’s pretty and seemed to do a good job with shit material but you can’t ever really tell what she looks like.

So, this fucking mirror exists and the artist next door decides to take it to her loft and, when you look into it, you see your death and then you kill yourself. First the asshole boyfriend gets it and then the artist herself, her and her no shirt wearing with overalls self.

Surprisingly, there’s some familiar faces in this stupid thing… there’s the dude from An American Werewolf in London… one of the homosexuals from Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and The Stepfather himself, Terry O’Quinn, although this time he doesn’t show his wiener… for better or worse. But the strangest pick of all has to be the casting of Ross Partridge as the lead – Keyes. He seems to be mostly asleep while he’s walking around taking pictures and talking to people so I’m really not sure why he was cast – maybe it was his appearance because he seem to resemble and A.S.S. and by A.S.S., of course I mean Anthony Scott Stapp.

Keyes Terry:

A.S.S: 

In any case, this isn’t the worst movie I have ever seen in my life but it’s not very good, at all. The plot was lame, the hair and make-up revolting and poor old O’Quinn has to deliver the worst line in the history of cinema.

There’s no quotes on the IMDB page and I’ve already sent the disc back but it goes’ something like this:

After Keyes has shot up a dinner table and threatened to murder three people at shotgun point, he has a change of heart and shoots the mirror instead. Yay the day is saved! but, O’Quinn, the cop, turns to Keyes and says: “Now you’re out of luck, Keyes” to which we think he’s going to arrest him. Keyes looks dejected and O’Quinn adds ” Seven years.” referring to the broken mirror.

Boo.

My bestie Natasha is visiting me this week, and it has been awesome. Truly. We have watched some great films and had a great time. However, I still needed to watch this movie. One day I decided it was time for her to acquaint herself with The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. It was a good day, I got my mob fill, she got her thrills from finally seeing the movies, all was well. Except that I still needed to see this film for today, and I am horrified to say that I followed two phenomenally awesome classics with this bullshit. Makes me sick to my stomach.

Popping it in, my fiancé soon fled the room when he figured out what I was watching. Poof, all gone.

I was not quite so fortunate (obviously), and Natasha was doing some work. She soon established that it is ludicrous to call this a horror. I soon established that I can be a master procrastinator and focused on so many things to pass the ridiculous run time of this movie, as well as the fact it is ludicrous how many movies have been shoehorned into this franchise. People got really desperate. I mean suddenly we have a new fucking family slaying tragedy (that was not the DeFeo kid or that Sonny, possessed sister-shagger). A whole new family. I mean wow.

The effects were terrible. Absolutely horrible, and the original Amityville house spent a lot of time flashing up in this bizarre ugly-ass mirror some homeless dude gave this icky photographer sissy guy. Plus the hair! Goodness. I love long hair and all and I am a big researcher for science and all, and I have been lamenting the lack of yummy to watch in these movies at least, but this guy Ross Partridge didn’t tick any boxes for me and a mullet will never flatter anyone. Ugh. I could not take anything seriously (no surprises there though) and there were so many flaws and plot holes. Not only that, the pacing was hideous and I thought this movie was never going to end. Let’s not even discuss the dialogue…

While we are at it, there is Suki, and she apparently just opens doors without having her outfit buttoned up over her boobs properly, and has no issues sharing with the world that she has suddenly taken to banging a friend and colleague. Like, no privacy? Her artwork, too, was suddenly a totally different style than that of the beginning, and nobody thought to ask her why it had changed so insanely? But they are all artists in some way? Never mind that, I found it highly impressive that this woman managed to get hanged by a single canvas. Small and all but, erm, no.

The development of Keyes starting to discover his past just didn’t gel, especially seeing as the homeless mirror man was also magically his cuckoo-crazy-and-insane pappa, which just… I don’t… how was he so totally unaware of everything? I know the mind is a powerful thing and totally capable of closing in on itself for protection, but the way this was handled was a joke.

Review: Insidious (2010)

“It’s not the house that is haunted. It’s your son.”
– Elise Reiner

The Lambert family moves into a new home to start fresh. Renai (Rose Byrne) and her husband, Josh (Patrick Wilson) have new plans and ideas for their lives. Renai is to work on her music more, and Josh remains a teacher at a school. They have two sons, Dalton (Ty Simpkins) and Foster (Andrew Astor), as well as a baby. The home seems to be perfect, but Renai and Josh’s relationship seems a little strained. One night after work while they are all sitting in the family room, Dalton starts screaming after having fallen off of the unstable ladder in the attic, but he seems alright, and so they think nothing further of it. However, the next day Dalton doesn’t come down for breakfast and Josh goes to investigate only to find his son inexplicably comatose.

“I just want things to be different in this house. I just had such a bad day. I’m scared nothing is gonna change.” – Renai Lambert

The doctors cannot help him whatsoever, and soon the family has to accept that it seems that Dalton will not be waking up anytime soon, though there is nothing wrong with him. Dalton is returned home with a hospital bed and all the equipment necessary to keep him nourished and all. Renai is becoming bitter, and as bad as it is, matters are made worse when Josh starts to “work late” all the time because he cannot deal with his home situation. Renai starts hearing strange things in the house, and is worried when Foster tells her that he wants another room seeing as it freaks him out when Dalton walks around at night. A nurse is helping Renai with Dalton one day, and after she leaves Renai discovers a bloody handprint on Dalton’s sheets, confirming her suspicions of something being wrong. Everything that can start going wrong in the house does, and Josh and Renai are at opposing ends as to what to do about it.

“I know someone who can help, if you’re willing to ask.” – Lorraine Lambert

The answer becomes clear when they move into a new home. The house had to be evil, had to be haunted. Their newfound hope is stamped out when Rose starts hearing and seeing things that were very much the same in the previous house in the new one. Josh seems to think she is not all together, but his mother Lorraine (Barbara Hershey) says that Renai is not mad, she has had bad dreams and that something dark and evil has expressed his desire of wanting Dalton’s body. Dalton is violently attacked in his bedroom and Josh relents and allows his mother to call for Elise Reiner (Lin Shaye), a woman who will theoretically be able to help them with whatever is going on.  She sends a team to investigate, and they establish quickly that there is a problem. Elise figures that Dalton is an exceptional astral projector that has travelled too far into another spiritual world that she calls The Further, and that he thinks he is dreaming and does not know he is no longer with his body. The malevolent spirits want the connection between his soul and body to break so that they can take hold of it and use it for evil.

“I can’t have somebody coming into our home and telling us the reason our son is in a coma is because his soul has floated off somewhere in another dimension.” – Josh Lambert

Who will go to bring Dalton back? Is anyone experienced enough to save the child? What has been going on with Dalton in this spiritual world? Will he be able to hold on long enough to not have his body infested with evil? Will the family ever go back to normality? Can Dalton wake up again and continue life, or will he forever be scarred by the events he has been involved with?

A 4/10 for Insidious. I will likely be very unpopular due to this, but I intensely disliked this movie. I enjoyed Patrick Wilson, but nothing and nobody else really after that. The movie had some stuff going for it initially, but I feel that anything and everything that Wan built up to (which was flimsy at best) was completely discarded when the family moved to the new home. The music was something that worked and then didn’t, it was inconsistent. It pushed too hard to be odd, different and to set you on edge, but it went from having chilling moments to just being too loud and annoying. The decay started slowly in the new home, them the slide began and soon after it was simply an avalanche. The plot holes, the ludicrous story, the way that too many jump scares and freaky, creepy things were trying to be squeezed into far too short a time frame. I never understood why everyone hyped so much about this one. I was really looking forward to seeing something new, something fresh, something freaky again and this is all that I got. I found it boring, constricting and incredibly predictable. It was one of the biggest let downs ever. Truly not worth the watch or the hype it generated – and how that came to be is still beyond me. I gave this movie another watch because I was told that I was far too judgemental the first time that I saw it, but watching it again I actually think I like it even less.