Opening in April of 2005 was yet another remake of a horror film from the late 70s, this time, The Amityville Horror was about to be revisited. With an estimated budget of, $18,000,000.00, The Amityville Horror appears to have had a decent showing at the box office. Directed by Andrew Douglas and with a screenplay by Scott Kosar (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)), The duo attempted to bring some new fans to an old story. The cast included; Ryan Reynolds (Blade: Trinity), Melissa George (Mulholland Dr.), Jesse James (The Butterfly Effect), Jimmy Bennett (The Polar Express), Chloe Grace Moretz (Big Momma's House 2) and Philip Baker Hall (The Talented Mr. Ripley).

The Amityville Horror opens in the late 1970s, where we find George (Ryan Reynolds) and Kathy (Melissa George) Lutz,a long with Kathy's three children from a previous marriage, out looking for a new home to settle in. As luck would have it, they come across a huge, beautiful colonial home in Amityville, Long Island. The couple is thrilled to find the home is within their price-range and in spite of finding out that a previous tenant had brutally murdered his entire family within twenty-eight days of moving into the home, the Lutzes decide to throw caution to the wind and make the home, theirs. Once the family is in the house, they experience their own strange occurrences.....young Chelsea (Chloe Grace Moretz) begins to see the ghost of the little girl who had lived in the house before. The two boys, Billy (Jesse James) and Michael (Jimmy Bennett) are also seeing their own weird happenings and are also being blamed for some of the happenings. As for George, he begins to slowly go mad and he lashes out at Kathy as well as the three kids.

The Amityville Horror is presented in widescreen anamorphic (2.35:1) and looks decent, I did have some pixelation from time to time on the disc I was viewing, but it's not to the point that it kept me from completing the film. There are some nice bonus features included and those are:

-A Commentary Track with Actor, Ryan Reynolds and Producers, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller.

-Eight Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary

-Supernatural Homicide (Featurette...a look at what really took place in the house)

-The Source of Evil (Making of Featurette)

-On Set Peeks

-Photo Gallery

-14 Theatrical Trailers

Some interesting points of interest regarding this film are:

-This would be the final film MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) would release as an independent company. On 08 April 2005, the studio was acquired by several companies, including Sony, in the middle of promotion for this film.

-This film was not screened for critics.

-Ryan Reynolds made the choice to remain distant from his 'film' children. He wasn't rude or mean to them, but chose to take this approach to the film, so when 'George' began his transformation, he'd have no trouble with the verbal and physical abuse towards the children.

Personally, I wasn't too excited about seeing this remake, as the original never really did much to impress me, but keeping an open mind, I popped the DVD in and sat back to see if this effort held anything more entertaining than the original. I will admit to being slightly more impressed with this film than it's original, but not by a whole lot. The film falls into the category of so many other horror films...been there, done it and I've seen it all before. Still, this isn't a total failure for me, there was some pretty decent efforts by the cast and Jesse James as Billy Lutz impressed me the most. He may be someone to watch for in the future, but really, the entire cast did well with what they had to work with. For me, the scares were too few and too predictable, but in keeping within the boundaries of the film, they worked. If you've seen the original version of the film and like myself, refused to revisit it very often, don't let those feelings stop you from checking this film out. While no amazing treat by any means, the 2005 version of, The Amityville Horror does deserve a rental at the very least.

Read John Marrone's take on The Reality of the Amityville Horror

Checkout our review of the original Amityville Horror (1979)

Buy the Amityville Horror Collection on DVD at Amazon.com

Buy the remake of the Amityville Horror on DVD at Amazon.com