The Amityville Horror

I felt like I was watching a hopeless knockoff of "The Shining," except that instead of a terrifying Jack Nicholson as the posessee, we get Van Wilder.

So Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds) and his wife, Kathy Lutz (Melissa George) and her three bratling children move to Amityville into the horror house where a year earlier, some guy killed his entire family, because the house told him to. So, Van Wilder says, "well houses don't kill people," and they move in. Idiot. Listen buddy, when you say things like that the house takes it as a challenge and proceeds to kill you and your family. And then it's going to divert from the "based on a true story" warning at the beginning and make a bunch of things up about the house's history over an Indian burial ground or some damn thing. The reason for this being that the whole "true story" nonsense is completely made up, in that the guy who actually did murder his entire family was in reality just a big-time a-hole, not possessed by a house. But there just MUST to be a supernatural reason for it all, so let's see...um, an Indian burial ground requires no thought, so we'll we'll just blame the Indians. Ok, let's get back to startling people, ripping off "The Shining" and making Van Wilder's eyes bloodshot whenever he's in the house to demonstrate that he's possessed.

Scary things jump out at the Lutz family, they scream, they run. Scary goopy apparitions hide out in the bathroom and scare people when they look into the mirror. The priest who comes to splash holy water around gets scared and runs away. Van Wilder chases everyone onto the roof with an axe. The creepy bratling daughter has normal conversations with a scary dead girl and warns the mother that Van Wilder will later attempt to kill them all. Again with the creepy kids talking to dead spirits--seriously, am I honestly supposed to believe that Susie-Six-Year-Old is going to react with calm inquisitiveness when some scary dead girl with a bullet hole in her head starts hanging out in her room? As if this is all perfectly natural?

Whatever. So Kathy Lutz eventually asks Van Wilder if he's feeling ok. "Well no, I'm kind of coming down with the demonic possession that's been going around, can't you tell from my bloodshot eyes and a-hole behavior of late?" Nope, guess not. Let's wait until you try to chop me in half with an axe before we can be sure.

Sigh. Say it with me people, haunted houses do not an intelligent real estate investment make. Similarly, blood-dripping ghosts hiding out in bathroom mirrors don't quite translate into a decent horror movie.