A stoner gets a job housesitting for a family in Amityville. It doesn’t take long for him to start hearing strange noises in the night, which puts him on edge. Soon after, he’s having bad dreams, and eventually, he realizes the place is haunted.
This is one of those flicks that are competently put together but are rather forgettable and disposable. Heck, I’m not sure anyone would’ve ever watched it if it didn’t have the “Amityville” name attached to it. Like Amityville: No Escape, An Amityville Poltergeist goes back and forth in time as it focuses on two different sets of characters dealing with a haunting in two different time periods. The scenes set in present day with the stoner house sitter investigating the weird goings on in the home work slightly better than the flashback scenes with the original homeowner coming face to face with the evil for the first time.
I think this might’ve eked by with a ** ½ rating, but the dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream sequence was a bit hard to take. The love triangle shit with the stoner, his best friend, and his best friend’s girl didn’t do it any favors either. It also didn’t help that the main specter was one of those Ring-inspired ghost girls with messy hair who crawls out of the TV and shuffles slowly around the house. The scenes where she moves around in a herky-jerky manner and screams echo The Grudge too. In fact, it might’ve been more accurate if the filmmakers had called it An Amityville Grudge instead of An Amityville Poltergeist.
I did like the scene where the hero watches Horrors of Spider Island on TV though. Later, another character is seen watching The Screaming Skull. Usually, whenever characters are watching a public domain horror movie in a flick like this, it’s Night of the Living Dead, so seeing scenes from these other films was a nice change of pace.
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