Translated material
Hut on the edge
"The Amityville Horror" on Moscow screens
The story of one of the oldest houses on Long Island, where an entire family died in the mid-70s, and another almost died a year later, is a classic urban legend of modern American times. First, a book by Jay Anson was published, which fully documented the misadventures of certain Lutzes, who had the imprudence to purchase a house in which a year earlier a certain Ronald DeFeo killed his family, obeying certain “voices.” Hot on the heels of the newly-minted bestseller, the first “Amityville Horror” was released. Subsequently, Stuart Rosenberg's film acquired as many as seven sequels, most of which were released directly to video and were real cinematic slag. By the beginning of the millennium, everyone had forgotten about this story, and even a documentary film that appeared in 2000, in which an attempt was made to lift the veil of secrecy over the Amityville events and in which the real, non-film Lutzes were interviewed, did not cause a stir.Everything changed quite recently, when Michael Bay took on the half-forgotten classic. A handsome, moderately well-fed man, best known as the director of expensive action films for the Jerry Bruckheimer studio (Bad Boys, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor). But oddly enough, it is Bay who is largely responsible for the fact that recently we can without embarrassment talk about some kind of renaissance of the horror film genre. With his help, last year the world saw the release of a congenial remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which can easily be placed on the same level as the original. Respectful treatment of the classics, non-trivial artistic solutions, the absence of postmodern figs in the pocket in the spirit of Wes Craven’s ill-memorated “Screams” - “The Texas Massacre” was actually a great success, and only completely hopeless snobs refuse to admit this.
Bay treated The Amityville Horror no worse. The principle of the remake remains the same: it seems to be based on a real story, the place and time of action remain intact, a newcomer sits in the director’s chair, who nevertheless has weight in related fields (in “Massacre” this turned out to be the author of music videos, Marcus Nispel, in "Horror" - advertiser and video director Andrew Douglas, whose filmography at that time only included the independent film "Searching for Crooked Jesus"). The recipe worked this time too. In truth, the real “Amityville” was a picture of little merit: it entered the history of cinema rather as a symbol of the seventies “family” horror, and, perhaps, thanks to the music of Lalo Schifrin, which was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar ( I didn’t receive either one or the other, though). Unlike "Massacre," it has not become an unconditional, albeit marginal, classic - but Bay and company treat it no less carefully than Tobe Hooper's Texas macabre.
The darkening of the Lutz family occurs within 28 days - a period that was tested, not without success, on the previous owners of the mansion. At first, even after learning the terrible truth, the new head of the family, George Lutz (Ryan Reynolds), who recently married Katie (Melissa George), a mother of three children who lost her husband, reassures his family and himself with the maxim “People are killed by other people, not at home.” “- but pretty soon the mirrors begin to reflect not only and not so much the owners of the house, well-worn plugs are oozing blood, instruments of torture that came from nowhere are rattling in the basement, and bloody girls with bullet holes in their frowning foreheads flash in their eyes. Later, when the invited nanny goes crazy, and the priest called to help runs away from the house in panic, attacked by a cloud of hellish insects, everything will become very bad. George will darken his gaze, move to the basement and will no longer part with the ax.
To our viewers unfamiliar with Amityville mythology, this will all seem like just another scary - really scary - ghost story. The only thing that can frighten a domestic film fan, apart from specific mysticism, is the resemblance between Lutz’s eldest son, Billy (Jesse James), and the once popular singer Tõnis Mägi: this similarity makes one think about such monstrous meanings of what is happening on the screen that no Bay could even imagine their heads would never have come. But otherwise, it’s a flawless, chilling spectacle that goes beyond traditional respectful homage. It seems that it is with this film that the true history of Amityville in cinema begins - and all previous attempts were nothing more than a dress rehearsal.
The current generation of film fans can and should be pitied for many reasons - the time of great premieres that could change worldviews has apparently passed forever. But in at least one thing we are able to compare with the lucky ones whose youth came in the mid-70s - the new generation has its own horror films that are not inferior to the gold reserves of thirty years ago. It makes sense to go to the cinema to see scary movies again - just like it once did. Meanwhile, Bay’s plans include a remake of the legendary “The Hitcher.”