Unlike some of the Amityville movies I’ve watched this month, this one actually takes place in Amityville and even opens up with a quote from Ron DeFeo. That doesn’t mean it’s any good though. In fact, this is one of the worst fake Amityville flicks I’ve sat through all month.
A young girl named Fawn (Monele LeStrat) inherits a rundown old theater in Amityville. Against her lawyer’s wishes, she and her friends have a slumber party in the abandoned theater. Naturally, the theater is haunted, and the evil playhouse won’t let the frightened teens leave. The force that resides inside the theater then possesses the friends and kills them off one by one.
While Amityville Theater doesn’t have the worst set-up in the world, whatever potential the premise did have is undone at nearly every turn thanks to the stilted dialogue, wooden performances, and sluggish pacing. This might’ve been bearable if the dialogue hadn’t been so tiresome or if the cast had been gifted with grace and wit or if the movie itself had a pulse. However, these would-be thespians (all of whom have thick Canadian accents) deliver just about every line as if it was the first table reading on day one of the production. The only cast member with an ounce of personality is Hollie Anne Kornik, who plays Wendy, the goth chick who’s squatting inside the theater. I’m not saying she’s great or anything, but she certainly deserves better than this tripe.
At ninety-nine minutes, it’s also way too long. Seventy-nine minutes is about the expiration date on the running time for a fake Amityville movie. This one is a good twenty minutes longer than it has any right being. The useless scenes of the teacher researching the history of the theater don’t help matters any either. The worst of these sequences occurs at the end when he interviews the mayor, who provides an eleventh-hour exposition dump and says, “Six must die!”
In short, Amityville Theater needs to be condemned.
AKA: Amityville Playhouse.
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