Welcome to Amityville… Again. Unfortunately.
There are bad horror movies, and then there are Amityville horror movies. By 2016, this franchise (and I use that word generously) had produced so many sequels, spin-offs, and “inspired by” disasters that you could practically build a small haunted subdivision out of them. And The Amityville Terror, directed by Michael Angelo (no, not the Ninja Turtle, though that would’ve been a vast improvement), is the sixteenth attempt to prove that lightning can strike the same cursed house repeatedly — and somehow get dumber every time.
You’d think by now filmmakers would realize that the real horror of Amityville is not the ghosts, but the sheer persistence of producers determined to milk this dead cow’s spirit one more time.
The Plot: Cursed Real Estate, Dumb People, and Dumber Demons
Our victims this time are the Jacobsons — a dysfunctional family moving into Amityville, because apparently Zillow still hasn’t added a “portal to Hell” filter to its listings. There’s mom Jessica (Kim Nielsen), dad Todd (Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau), teenage daughter Hailey (Nicole Tompkins), and Todd’s unstable sister Shae (writer Amanda Barton, clearly trying to exorcise her screenplay demons onscreen).
They move into the infamous haunted house, which Shae somehow purchased from a shady realtor named Delilah McAllister (Tonya Kay), who looks like she sells both property and witchcraft subscriptions. Immediately, creepy stuff happens: hallucinations, voices, and the unshakable sense that the cast is trapped in a movie that should’ve gone straight to somewhere else.
Hailey, the resident Final Girl, tries to adjust to small-town life by making friends with a local boy named Brett (Trevor Stines). Unfortunately, she also makes enemies — a trio of mean girls who seem to have escaped from a CW audition tape. The bullying subplot adds nothing to the story except extra reasons to root for the house to eat everyone faster.
Meanwhile, Aunt Shae begins acting weird — which, in Amityville terms, means “possessed but not interesting.” She hallucinates, burns her skin in the bathtub, and later floats menacingly while holding a scalpel. Her transformation from eccentric artist to demonic slasher feels like the world’s least subtle PSA about what happens when you move in with relatives.
As the hauntings escalate, everyone in the house starts acting unhinged: Jessica mutilates herself while gardening, Todd drinks and flirts with evil realtor Delilah (never trust a woman in Amityville real estate), and the daughter discovers — through exposition so convoluted it deserves its own exorcism — that the town is feeding human sacrifices to the house to keep its evil at bay.
Oh, and apparently the house’s original child resident, Jimmy Oberest, drowned his sister in acid before killing his parents. Because why settle for a simple haunting when you can throw in acid murders, satanic portals, and incestuous small-town conspiracies?
In the blood-soaked finale, Aunt Shae goes full demon mode, kills the parents, and tries to finish off Hailey. Our heroine ultimately shoots her possessed aunt in the head with an arrow, causing her to spontaneously combust — which, to be fair, is the most anyone has combusted in the Amityville franchise since my patience with it.
The movie ends with Delilah the Realtor showing the house to yet another doomed family, proving that the real villain here isn’t Satan — it’s the housing market.
Characters: Haunted by Bad Writing
Let’s be honest: no one watches a direct-to-video Amityville sequel for the performances, but The Amityville Terrormanages to set the acting bar so low it’s practically in the basement with the ghosts.
Nicole Tompkins does her best as Hailey, but she’s trapped in a script that gives her exactly two emotions: “confused” and “screaming.” It’s not her fault — she’s trying to survive a movie that feels possessed by bad dialogue.
Amanda Barton (who also wrote this mess) stars as Aunt Shae, and while she throws herself into the role of “unhinged relative turned murder demon,” her performance hovers somewhere between soap opera breakdown and community-theater witchcraft. Watching her cackle through black contact lenses is less scary and more like witnessing someone audition for The Real Housewives of Amityville.
Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau as dad Todd alternates between dull obliviousness and midlife-crisis lust. He cheats, drinks, and somehow manages to start a fire at work — the triple crown of movie dads destined for a gruesome death.
And then there’s Tonya Kay as Delilah, the seductive real estate agent-slash-satanic conspirator. She’s basically a demonic version of HGTV’s Joanna Gaines, except instead of renovating homes, she fills them with corpses.
The Scares: Haunted by Mediocrity
The movie’s title promises terror. What it delivers is a parade of cheap jump scares and stock footage of haunted house clichés: doors slamming, mirrors cracking, lights flickering, and one possessed relative away from a Lifetime movie.
The visual effects are bargain-bin at best. When Shae’s face morphs or bodies combust, it looks like someone slapped a Snapchat filter over the footage. There’s a ghost boy who shows up occasionally, but he’s about as menacing as a Halloween store mannequin.
Even the deaths — the supposed highlights of a supernatural horror — are uninspired. Characters die offscreen, offhand, or in a confusing blur of shaky camera work. The only real terror comes from realizing there are still 40 minutes left.
Direction: Amityville by Numbers
Michael Angelo’s direction is technically competent in the way a student film sometimes accidentally is. The camera never stops moving, the lighting oscillates between “too bright to be scary” and “too dark to see,” and the editing feels like it was done during a séance.
To his credit, he tries to inject atmosphere — the eerie house, the weird locals, the sinister realtor — but it all feels recycled from a dozen better movies. The pacing is uneven, alternating between melodramatic family squabbles and random bursts of supernatural nonsense.
And let’s not forget the dialogue. Characters routinely explain the plot to each other like they’re in a group project they didn’t read the assignment for:
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“The house… it’s evil.”
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“Something happened here.”
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“We have to get out before it’s too late!”
You could make a drinking game out of the clichés, but you’d be dead before the second act.
World-Building: The Cult of Convenience
The film’s attempts at mythology are hilariously inconsistent. One minute, it’s a haunted house movie. The next, it’s about black magic, a child murderer, and a town of Satanic realtors who feed souls to the property to prevent evil from spreading. It’s The Wicker Man meets House Hunters International, minus the sense of humor or coherent plotting.
Apparently, every local in Amityville knows about the curse, but no one warns the Jacobsons because “the town must feed the house.” Which, honestly, makes more sense than the U.S. tax code but less sense than any actual horror logic.
The “Terror” Part: Still Missing
By the time the house catches fire and people start exploding, you’re less frightened and more relieved. The only genuinely unsettling moment is realizing this movie was the sixteenth Amityville film — meaning fifteen others had to crawl so this one could stumble and fall face-first into a puddle of CGI blood.
Even the ending — with the realtor smiling and showing the cursed house to yet another family — isn’t chilling. It’s just depressing. Somewhere, Jay Anson’s ghost is watching this and regretting ever writing that original book.
Final Verdict: A Haunted House of Horrible Ideas
The Amityville Terror is what happens when you take one part haunted house, one part bad soap opera, and one part satanic cult, then blenderize it without a lid. It’s neither scary nor funny enough to be entertaining — just a mildly cursed viewing experience that makes you long for the sweet release of closing credits.
If the house really does feed on souls, it’s going to stay hungry, because this movie doesn’t have one.
Grade: D–
Recommended for: People who’ve watched every other Amityville movie and still hate themselves, real estate agents with a dark sense of humor, and ghosts who enjoy watching humans suffer more than they do.
