A deeply dysfunctional family, consisting of an abusive father (Burt Young), an unstable mother (Rutanya Alda), an older brother and sister (Jack Magner, Diane Franklin) who are attracted to each other, and a younger brother and sister who like to play at murdering each other, move into the Amityville house, and demonic activity starts up immediately. The elder son is possessed and hears voices telling him to kill his family, while the local priest (James Olson) plans an exorcism.
When was house blessing a fad? I was raised Catholic, have many, many Catholic relatives, and knew the Catholic families around town, and no one ever had a priest drop by to bless a house. But in Amityville movies, there are always priests dropping round to sprinkle holy water.
Amityville II is the best film in the franchise, and it is hard to find a more insignificant compliment. The first film claimed to be a true account of a demonic house, based on a conman and his wife’s (a con-woman? A con-couple?) book. Their story has since been thoroughly debunked, and they finally admitted it was all a fake. Amityville II is a strange bird. In reality, there was a multiple murder committed at the home (a fact that George Lutz, the conman, took advantage of in creating his fraud). So, is this a prequel, telling the story of those initial killings? The names have changed, as have the police accounts, the involvement of a priest, etc. Even the date is wrong, as this film is set in the ‘80s. As the filmmakers didn’t feel constrained by any reality, it works out best to just see this as fiction.
And how does it stand up as fiction? It begins well. This is a family ripe for demonic possession. Burt Young creates a real horror in the father, who beats his wife and children, yells more often than speaks, embarrasses them, and is rude to everyone. If you want to make a movie about evil, he’s a great place to start. The mother is almost as repugnant. Filled with self-deception, she’s obsessively religious and frigid. The youngest children are constantly saying how they love their siblings, and then one puts a plastic bag over the other’s head—for fun. These are not well children. They are also bizarrely happy considering their situation, but that looks to be an error in scripting rather than warped character development. Then there is quiet, introspective Sonny, the eldest son, who has a homicidal rage growing within. You can’t blame him considering his father. Sonny is also overly fond of his sister. And his sister is an airhead who returns his affections. A demon would be thrilled to have such an easy bunch to work with. It doesn’t take much pushing to send them all into unpleasant territories. And that’s where this movie works. Each family member’s problematic traits are intensified (except for Sonny who is fully possessed so he just flips out completely). The beatings are intensified, mom gets more unstable, and Sonny and his Sister launch into a physical relationship that is unpleasant for everyone. His seduction of her is humorously underwritten:
Sonny: “Take off your nightgown.”
Sister: “What?”
Sonny: “Just for a second”
Sister: “OK. Just for a second.”
Wow, this guy’s good with girls. Now I know it is his sister and she loves him, but I would have thought it would be slightly harder to convince your sister to strip for sex.
All this leads to the obvious climax that is the high point of the film. But it happens at the halfway mark. Then things devolve into a rip off of The Exorcist. The second half of the film now stars the priest, overacted by James Olson. He apparently watched The Exorcist (as did the script writers) and paraphrases it for the last twenty minutes of the film. I suppose they figured The Exorcist had brought in some good money, so why not copy it? There’s no other reason. I can think of at least ten better ways to wrap up the film if the story is a consideration. But I’m confident that a coherent story was not even part of the discussion when putting this movie together.
The final third also requires some pretty odd behavior on the part of the police to move the plot along. Apparently, these police don’t handcuff multi-murder suspects and they don’t even look for the guy who carried out a jailbreak.
Perhaps the best move is to switch this on (notice I’m talking about seeing it when it pops up on cable, not paying for it at a theater or even as a rental), watch until the mass murder, then switch over to the news.
It was followed by Amityville 3-D.