Isnt that second movie poster cool? The first one is really generic, but I think the second one has character and actually makes it look like the movie might be good. This is the sixth Amityville horror movie. I enjoyed the first two (the second one has a stupid ending, last 30 minutes or so, but it's good up to that point) I still need to see the third one, the fourth one is terrible (and yet I own it and have watched it twice, so take that with a grain of salt, I guess) and I think the fifth one is "Amityville: Dollhouse," which is horrible but has a cool doll house going for it. I kind of want to see all these movies in the series, because they're terrible but the Amityville house is creepy, and I like ghost stories, and movies about families that are falling apart when an evil of some kind takes hold. Plus I'm a glutton for punishment, obviously.
So in this movie, a dad named Jacob brings home an antique clock from the Amityville house, not knowing that it's cursed by evil. The dad is kind of an absent parent, always off on trips, and his ex girlfriend has been staying with his two teenage kids to keep an eye on them while he's gone. Um...guess that relationship ended well. Weird. His teenage daughter is naive, and his teenage son is a troublemaker, so his family has obvious issues. Soon after he returns home with the cursed clock, things get strange. The clock seems to be able to control time, sending the house back into the past and then forward to the present again. Soon Jacob suffers an injury, so his ex girlfriend moves into the house to help take care of him (there's no way I would do this much for an ex, and she's supposed to be seeing someone else, too). Things begin to spiral out of control, and the family has to figure out how to stop the evil before it's too late.
I'm not a big fan of Jacob. He's very self-centered, expecting his ex girlfriend to drop everything and do what he wants her to do (though she totally bangs him right when he gets home, so I agree that she's sending him, um, "mixed signals." The teenage kids are annoying. The daughter is totally oblivious to everything, while the son spouts off at every opportunity like he thinks he knows everything about every subject. Oh to be a teenager again.
The movie drags a lot more than it should. I think it's supposed to be building character, but I don't like the characters much, so it's kind of annoying. Well, I guess the teenage daughter and ex girlfriend are ok. They're the most likable characters, at least, but the dad is a jerk and the teenage son is annoying. Plus the scares are few and far between. There's an animal attack, a ghost that climbs in bed with someone (but it turns out to be a dream) and the dad acting all obsessed and weird, but again, I feel like that's just his character. You're no Jack Nicholson, dude, so stop acting like you're in "The Shining."
The movie also seems like it doesn't know what it wants to do. It introduces this cool idea that the clock might be able to control time, then does almost nothing with that idea except make someone late for dinner once. The house does annoying things like make weird noises and set fire to someone's bushes, but not much else. Plus, I don't really like the ex girlfriend's new boyfriend much (he likes to go on rants about how Jacob is trying to control her life, while he's trying to control her life too...damn, does she ever have a type). So basically we have two annoying jealous guys having annoying testosterone-fueled arguments, everyone acting crazy, A bunch of ideas that go nowhere, and the music being really loud as if it's trying to convince us something scary is always happening when the scariest thing is that this movie drags so much it seems like it's five hours long when it tops off at an hour and a half. Boo, creepy.
I will say this, though. I think the ending of the movie is great. Not the ending as in the whole last 30 minutes, when the script finally decides to do some stuff with the "clock controlling time" idea, but it's all so stupid and ridiculous you wish you could go back to when the movie didn't even try to gave a plot, because that was easier to sit through. No, I mean the very last scene, the final five minutes, are pretty awesome, and there's a great line that almost makes sitting through the whole movie worth the pain. Almost, but not quite. So just watch the last five minutes and thank me later.
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