EVIL DEAD RISE (2023) *

I guess it makes me an old fuddy duddy to say this, but here it goes.  Children, especially small children, have no place in an Evil Dead movie.  It’s one thing to abuse, beat, torment, vomit on, stab, and dismember Bruce Campbell.  It’s another thing when it happens to little kids.  

What makes it even worse is that it’s their own mother who torments them.  When her son plays a record containing transcripts from The Book of the Dead, it unleashes an evil spirit in their ramshackle apartment building.  The spirit soon possesses his mother, turning her into a cackling, depraved, demented Deadite.  Before long, she attacks her children and tries to make the evil spirits possess them too.  It’s then up to her no-good sister to protect the children and send the evil packing.

The pre-release buzz made a big deal that the filmmakers were taking Evil Dead out of the cabin and into an apartment building.  (The “Rise” of the title refers to not only the Evil Dead rising, but the location, a high-rise apartment.)  I guess it might’ve worked if the movie went into full-on Demons 2 mode, but most of the action takes place in a single apartment, with some occasional side trips to a hallway, a stairwell, the elevator, and the parking garage.  Heck, writer/director Lee Cronin makes such little use of the new surroundings that it makes you wonder why it just couldn’t have taken place at the cabin again.  I mean the wraparound scenes, which happen at a cabin in the woods, are the only sequences worth a damn in the entire thing, and only serve to remind you why it works best in that setting in the first place.  

Hell, it pains me to say this, but the gore isn’t even all that good.  We get a scalping and a scissors up the nose, but that is about it.  The much-ballyhooed cheese grater scene is a big bust.  Most of the pain is inflicted on the kids, which is just unpleasant.  If you want to see young teens eating glass and being butchered, then have at it.

It doesn’t help that none of the characters are compelling in the least.  Plus, all the callbacks to the previous movies fall flat on their face and are downright cringe-inducing.  Every.  Single.  One.  There are even moments that crib from The Shining, The Thing, and… uh… Fargo.  

The only touch I did like was that in addition to blood and bile, the possessed Deadites have now added jizz to the liquids they are prone to projectile-vomit.  One broad spewed so much seed you’ll swear she just got finished with a fifty-man bukkake session.  That’s not a ringing endorsement to be sure, but in a movie as massively disappointing as this, you’ve got to take what you can get.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE AMITYVILLE HAUNTING (2011) **

A group of friends break into the Amityville Horror house to film a sex tape.  One of the girls asks, “Are there beds in there?”, but her boyfriend bangs her in the bathroom anyway.  Sadly, before they can finish the deed, they are slaughtered by an unseen presence.  

Then, a family comes to look at the house.  Since they’re broke, a haunted house is the only thing they can afford.  (Although the actual Amityville Horror house would’ve easily gone for upper six figures, but realistic depictions of the real estate market isn’t this movie’s forte.)  Before the family can even close on the house, the realtor dies under mysterious circumstances.  On the day they move in, one of the movers falls down the stairs and dies.  Heck, almost every unannounced visitor to the home kicks the bucket somehow or the other.  

This is a crappy Found Footage flick that’s meant to capitalize on the success of Paranormal Activity, so that means the bratty son films everything with his camera.  He also uses way too many zooms and seemingly has never heard of the Auto Focus feature.  Later, the increasingly crazed patriarch of the family installs security cameras, which leads to more Paranormal Activity-inspired shenanigans.  Doors won’t stay shut, weird noises are heard, and the camera starts picking up strange images.  Things go from bad to worse when the family’s youngest daughter starts talking to an imaginary friend who may be the ghost of one of the original Amityville victims.

I’m not a fan of Found Footage horror but combining the genre with a fake Amityville film seemed like a no-brainer.  As far as these things go, it’s far from the worst one I’ve seen.  Even though the shaky-cam bullshit gets irritating, the body count is relatively high, and the pacing moves at an acceptable rate.  Does that necessarily mean it’s good?  No way!  However, when you’re in the middle of a month-long fake Amityville marathon, you take the small victories when you can get them.

TUBI CONTINUED… THE AMITYVILLE HARVEST (2020) **

The Amityville Harvest was the first of three (unrelated) fake Amityville movies written and directed by Thomas J. Churchill in a three-year span.  Of the three, I’d say The Amityville Moon was clearly the best of the trio.  This one, while slightly better than Churchill’s Amityville Uprising, is just too inconsistent to recommend.  

Churchill does deliver a fine pre-opening credits sequence where a grieving widow gets locked inside a funeral home with only her husband’s corpse to keep her company.  This sequence works surprisingly well as Churchill does a good job at slowly ratcheting up the tension.  It easily could’ve stood on its own as a strong short subject.  However, it’s all downhill after the opening credits.  

A film crew arrives at the funeral home shortly thereafter to film a documentary on the Civil War.  They are greeted by the obviously evil owner, Vincent (Kyle Lowder), who is clearly a whack-a-doodle of the first order.  Eventually, he’s revealed to be a centuries-old vampire who actually (SPOILER) masterminded the assassination of Abraham Lincoln!  

Churchill tosses everything in but the kitchen sink.  There are vampires, Confederate zombies, a mad doctor, odd dream sequences, ghosts that look like they were created by an out-of-control Spirograph, and even a scene that rips off The Shining.  Some individual moments work, but overall, it’s so all over the place that nothing really sticks.  The ending in particular sucks, which is a shame considering how much promise the opening scene held.  

Lowder makes for a lame villain.  He’s just too bland to be menacing and isn’t physically imposing in the least.  The supporting cast is pretty good though.  Sadie (Wrong Turn 4) Katz makes for a solid heroine, and it was fun to see Eileen (Linda Blair’s double in The Exorcist) Dietz as the cranky old biddy.  Johanna Rae is also quite fetching as the documentary’s hair and make-up coordinator.  

Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose is listed in the credits as a co-producer.  I wonder if she was originally going to star in the film, but then had to drop out and the credit was there as an honorary type of thing.  One thing’s for sure, her screen presence is sorely missed.  She might’ve been able to make this wildly uneven flick worthwhile.

TUBI CONTINUED… AMITYVILLE DEATH HOUSE (2015) **

I thought I was in trouble during the chaotic opening scene.  It involved a bunch of people trying to burn a book of spells and a witch that turned into a crab-walking spider-woman.  I thought this was going to be another case where I got suckered into watching a sequel to something I hadn’t seen yet.  As it turns out, it’s only one of those “Start at the end and then rewind back to the beginning” openings.  That didn’t necessarily make it BETTER, but at least everything made sense eventually.  

Amityville Death House was brought to us by a team of heavy hitters.  And by “heavy hitters”, I mean it’s directed by Mark (Amityville in Space) Polonia, executive produced by Fred Olen (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers) Ray, has special effects by Brett (They Bite) Piper, and “stars” Eric Roberts.  I put stars in quotations because although his voice is heard coming out of a warlock with an iron mask on his face, I don’t think it’s actually him behind the mask.  I think he did another one of those “literally” phoned-in performances a la A Talking Cat!?! where his dialogue was recorded off a speaker phone.

Roberts plays “The Dark One”, the seemingly omnipotent villain who narrates and relates flashbacks.  Sometimes, he hams it up using a vaguely British accent.  Other times, he sounds like… you know… Eric Roberts.  

Anyway, a group of friends returning home from delivering hurricane relief decides to make a pit stop and check in on their grandmother in Amityville.  No one in the group realizes she’s a direct descendent of the witch who put a curse on the town centuries ago.  (Although the townsfolk all seem to know what the score is.)  The kids find an old diary containing a bunch of spells and they stupidly read one out loud, and it doesn’t take long before the witch starts possessing and killing everyone.

Amityville Death House isn’t great, but it isn’t boring either, which is about all you can hope for from a fake Amityville flick.  At least there’s a lot of fishermen, hunters, stranded motorists, and moonshiners hanging around the outskirts of the plot to help the body count stack higher and higher.  The finale (which is essentially the beginning, but you know what I mean) is decent, and there’s at least one memorable moment involving “a witch’s teats”.  If it had one or two more nutty scenes like this, it might’ve been a winner.  

TUBI CONTINUED… THE AMITYVILLE ASYLUM (2014) **

Lisa (Sophia Del Pizzo) gets a job as a janitor on the night shift at a creepy mental institution.  Almost immediately, she starts seeing ghosts of little girls and dead patients walking the hallways.  Naturally, no one believes her.  It doesn’t help matters when one of the inmates is allegedly a witch (Eileen Daly from Razor Blade Smile and the face of Redemption Films) who knows all of Lisa’s dirty secrets.  Things eventually come to a head when Lisa learns the asylum has been built on the former grounds of the old Amityville Horror house.  

The Amityville Asylum is a competent but generic thriller.  It’s watchable, but it never really grabs you.  It goes through all the motions and checks all the obvious boxes, and yet, somehow, it remains tepid and forgettable.  I guess the big problem with it is the sluggish pacing.  That, and the fact that nothing much ever really happens, and when it finally does, it’s not particularly graphic or effective.  

The film is anchored by a solid lead performance by Del Pizzo.  She’s particularly good during the early scenes where she’s given the grand tour of the asylum, learns the ropes of working there, and discovers the creepy “Ward X” where all the dangerous inmates are housed.  However, Del Pizzo’s efforts just can’t carry the film through its draggy passages.  It also doesn’t help that everything that happens in the last twenty minutes is predictable and ho-hum.  The denouement goes on way too long too.

This is another one of those movies where the soundtrack gets overbearing at times and drowns out the dialogue.  Most of the time when this happens, it occurs when characters are talking about the real-life events in Amityville, which makes me wonder if it was done on purpose.  Like, the filmmakers were afraid they were gonna get sued if the dialogue hewed too close to the old movies and/or events.  Either way, it’s kind of annoying.  

Oh, and this is another one of those fake Amityville movies, like Amityville Theater in which the phrase, “Six must die!” is heard.

AKA:  Amityville:  Asylum.  AKA:  The Nesting 2:  Amityville Asylum.

TUBI CONTINUED… AMITYVILLE CLOWNHOUSE (2017) * ½

The clown painting that showed up at the finale of Amityville Toybox finds its way into the home of an unsuspecting family.  During a birthday party, dear old dad dresses up like a clown and slaughters his family with a shotgun before turning the weapon on himself.  Later, some enterprising thieves break into the house and try to steal the painting with the intention of selling it on the dark web.  Naturally, they are killed by the ghost of the clown.  

This is a solid set-up for a fake Amityville flick.  Unfortunately, it goes off the rails soon after.  If you’re watching it to see the killer clown on the thumbnail picture, you’re going to be severely disappointed as the killer clown plot is immediately dropped about fifteen minutes into the movie.  From there, it’s a straight sequel to Amityville Toybox with the killer wind-up monkey terrorizing another family.  

Another guy buys the possessed toy monkey at an antique toy shop run by Mark (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2:  Freddy’s Revenge) Patton.  He brings it home and immediately starts having nightmares.  Before long, he’s berating and beating his poor wife and picking up and killing hookers.  

Amityville Clownhouse suffers from a lot of padding, including unnecessary news reports, a ten-minute recap of Amityville Toybox, extremely slow-moving opening and closing credits sequences, and a long scene where someone fondles the monkey.  (At least they didn’t spank it.)  The film also has a weird sound mix where incidental music and sound effects drown out the dialogue in some scenes.  The finale is underwhelming, to say the least.

It's not all bad though.  I liked the homage to the Amityville 3-D poster (which also turned up in Amityville in the Hood), and the gore (which includes a jack-in-the-box that rips someone’s eyes out) is decent.  Patton gives a fun, tweaked performance too, but it’s not nearly enough to save this slow-moving slog.

AKA:  Amityville:  Evil Never Dies.

TUBI CONTINUED… AMITYVILLE TOYBOX (2016) ** ½

Near the beginning of this movie-watching experiment, I reviewed Amityville in the Hood without realizing it was a sequel to Amityville Toybox and Amityville Clownhouse.  With that knowledge firmly in my back pocket, I will now set out to review the first two installments of the trilogy.  

Amityville Toybox is basically a loose remake of The Devil’s Gift (scenes of which later appeared in Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders).  A father brings his family together to celebrate his fiftieth birthday.  At the party, one of his kids gives him an antique wind-up monkey as a present.  Pretty soon, dad goes from being funny and cheerful to cranky and crazed.  Little does anyone know the monkey came from the haunted house in Amityville.  Before long, dear old dad begins seeing the ghost of his father who urges him to kill his entire family.

This is one of those fake Amityville movies that is set in the mold of the original franchise sequels where an item from the original Amityville house carries the Amityville curse onto another family.  As far as these things go, it’s better than you might think.  It starts out with a reserved depiction of the real-life DeFeo murders before it segways into a nice little ‘70s inspired opening credits sequence.  (There are also scenes of flies buzzing and characters chopping wood, like in the original, and there is an incest subplot that’s kind of like Part 2.)  

With the extreme Dutch angles, colorful lighting, incest themes, and scenes of squabbling family members being killed off under the same roof, Amityville Toybox kind of reminded me of a modern-day Andy Milligan movie.  Don’t worry, it’s better than that sentence suggests.  Mostly.  Just don’t be fooled by the title.  This isn’t a Demonic Toys kind of thing.  There’s only one killer toy, and it really doesn’t do a whole lot once the father gets possessed.  

I think this would’ve been a perfectly fine movie had it ended at the hour mark.  Unfortunately, it drags needlessly on for another fifteen minutes.  The epilogue involving some comic relief paranormal investigators was completely unnecessary and feels like it was only tacked on to get the film to feature length.  I could’ve easily done without the gratuitous set-up for the sequel too.  Despite those reservations, this is one of the better fake Amityville flicks out there.  

AKA:  The Amityville Legacy.  AKA:  Amityville:  Legacy.