'Amityville' one 'Horror' of a film

Some people believe that the spirits of the dead who have yet to atone for past crimes still stalk the Earth, bound until they make up for their sins. Maybe "The Amityville Horror" is evidence of this phenomenon. It all started with a less than tolerable 1979 film based on an allegedly true story of a Long Island family moving into a good old haunted house.\nTerror ensues when an evil army of bad sequels (including a few direct-to-video flops and even a made-for-TV movie) continue to be resurrected well into the '90s. The dark presence of the Amityville house has returned once again to the big screen perhaps in another attempt to settle past transgressions and lay its soul to final rest. Sadly, it looks as though audiences will be doomed to haunting by this demon of a franchise for some time to come. The new version of "The Amityville Horror," while far superior to the original, isn't worth the effort it takes to sit in the theater watching it, even for horror fans.\nThe new "Amityville" has basically the same premise of the originals: newlyweds Kathy (Melissa George) and George Lutz (Ryan Reynolds) take Kathy's three children from a previous marriage and move into a new home. Only a year ago in the same home, twentysomething Ronald DeFeo (who bears a striking resemblance to George), murdered his parents and younger siblings, including a trio that matches in age and gender to Kathy's children. Scary things start happening in the house. Viewers are subjected to watching strange, unexplained scenes and ghosts wander through the backgrounds of shots (much akin to "The Ring" and "The Sixth Sense," only not scary), while the characters are oblivious to it all.\nThe characters also seem oblivious to how many times their gaze passes by an unoccupied space in the room, which a few seconds and a quick shot later will be taken up by some ghostly presence. This gets very old really quickly, mostly because it's done in seemingly every scene. George becomes progressively ill as the days go on. Delirium sets in and soon tension mounts as he gets closer and closer to killing his family. The youngest daughter starts seeing the ghost of the girl who died in the house, who tells her to do things like jump off the roof.\nNow if someone in your house started running around with an axe while mumbling about how everyone else in the family was dumb enough to deserve death, don't you think you'd take him to see a psychiatrist? And wouldn't you get help for the little girl after the first time she tried to jump off the roof of a three-story house? No. That would make too much sense. Instead, it's better if everyone acts as though life is normal until someone actually does go on a murderous rampage. This is where the movie starts to crumble. \nA few high points of the film include the attention to '70s detail in clothing, furniture and vehicles. Also of note are Reynolds' nearly (but definitely not completely) successful escape from another Van Wilder character.\nBut these in no way make up for the ridiculousness of it all and the sheer boredom of failed scares. "The Amityville Horror" doesn't even rate in that category of bad horror flicks to laugh at. If you want to actually be scared by ghosts in a house, watch "The Others" and stay away from "Amityville"