Ryan Reynolds plays George Lutz as a man who loses himself inside his own house. That is the engine of the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror, and for a while it works. The film wants to be a haunted-house picture with a human core, and it finds one in Reynolds’ slow slide from worried father to something far worse. It does not fully land, though. The scares depend too heavily on what came before them, and the ending leaves the central question unanswered instead of resolving it.
The setup is familiar by now. George, his wife Kathy, and their three children move into a cheap Dutch colonial mansion in Amityville, Long Island. They do not know the house’s history: Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his entire family there in 1974, claiming he was driven by voices he heard inside. The Lutzes start seeing strange things almost immediately. Their daughter Chelsea befriends a ghostly girl named Jodie, one of the murdered DeFeo children. The father grows abusive. The house itself seems alive.
Trailer, via Amazon MGM Studios.
The Family at the Center
Reynolds anchors the picture. His George starts as a loving husband and father, then drifts toward something darker as the weeks pass. The shift is gradual enough that you feel it, which is rarer than it should be in a genre piece. Melissa George plays Kathy with a quiet desperation that grounds the film’s more absurd moments. Jesse James, Jimmy Bennett, and young Chloë Grace Moretz round out the kids, and the youngest Moretz stands out as the one who sees the ghost most clearly.
Philip Baker Hall shows up as Father Callaway, the priest brought in to bless the house. His scenes are brief but effective, giving the film a calm center against the rising chaos around him. Brendan Donaldson and Isabel Conner play Ronald and Jodie DeFeo, and their presence hangs over the film even when they are not on screen.
What the Film Gets Right
The film’s early stretch, before the family fully descends, is its best work. The quiet dread of the Lutzes settling in, unpacking boxes in a house that feels wrong, is handled with restraint. The director leans on atmosphere rather than jump scares, and the result is genuinely unsettling. The house itself, shot in wide, empty frames, does most of the work.
The babysitter Lisa, played by Rachel Nichols, is a weak link. Her scenes exist mostly to explain the DeFeo murders to the Lutzes, and her encounter with Jodie in the closet feels rushed rather than frightening. The sequence is meant to be the film’s centerpiece, but it plays like a repeat of the 1979 version rather than a fresh take on it.
Where It Falls Apart
The middle stretch drags. The film spends too much time showing the family’s daily routines — breakfast, homework, arguments — without adding new terror to them. This is a haunted house movie that forgets to haunt. The scares that do arrive feel borrowed from other films in the series, not earned from the story itself.
The climax is a letdown. George kills the family dog, Harry, in a fit of possession, and the film ends with the family fleeing the house without ever fully explaining what drove George to act that way. The tagline promises an explanation for the next 28 days, but the film delivers none. The mystery of the house remains unsolved, which reads as laziness rather than artistic choice.
A Ghost Without a Home
The Amityville Horror is a competent but unremarkable entry in a long-running franchise. It is better than most of its contemporaries, thanks largely to Reynolds’ committed performance, but it fails to break new ground. The house is a character, but it is a character we have met before.
“What happened over the next 28 days has never been explained.”
That line sells a promise the film never honors. It is a shame, because the setup is strong. A haunted house, a broken family, a father losing himself — those ingredients could have made something lasting. Instead, the film settles for repeating old scares without earning them.
By the Numbers
- Runtime: 90 minutes
- Director: Andrew Douglas
- Writers: Sandor Stern, Scott Kosar
- Budget: $19 million
- Box office: $107.5 million
- Score: 6.1/10
The film is not a failure, exactly. It is a missed opportunity. Reynolds gives a performance worth watching, and the early stretches are genuinely unsettling. But the middle drags, the scares repeat themselves, and the ending refuses to answer the questions it raises. It is a solid, forgettable entry in a franchise that has produced far stronger films.
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