The Amityville franchise is like a cursed dollhouse: every time you think you’ve closed the door, some new installment crawls out of the attic with another pointless story. By the time we reach The Amityville Curse (1990), the fifth entry, the series has already given us a haunted house, a haunted clock, a haunted lamp, and even a haunted mirror. So naturally, Canada decided to step in and ask: what if the real evil was… a confession booth in a basement?
Yes, you read that correctly. The big villain here is a Catholic confessional. It’s like The Exorcist was rewritten by IKEA.
A Murder, a Booth, and a Plot Thinner Than Holy Water
The film opens in Amityville, where a priest is shot in a confession booth. No demons, no flies, no bleeding walls—just good old-fashioned homicide. The booth is then shoved into the basement of a clergy house, where it sits for twelve years collecting dust and apparently supernatural resentment.
Enter Marvin, a psychologist with the personality of a dial tone, and his wife Debbie, who spends the entire film acting like she walked into the wrong open house. They buy the clergy house and invite friends to help renovate. This is the first red flag: no one in history has ever said, “You know what sounds like a fun vacation? Home improvement in Amityville.”
Meet the Houseguests: Future Corpses on Layaway
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Debbie: Our resident nightmare-haver. Her main job is to scream and write in dream diaries that look like rejected Latin homework assignments.
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Marvin: The smug skeptic husband who believes psychology can fix ghost problems. Spoiler: it can’t.
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Frank: Played by Kim Coates before he became a TV badass. Here, he’s just moody wallpaper waiting for possession.
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Bill: The camcorder guy, aka “the friend who documents your murder so cops have something to watch later.”
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Abigail: She leaves halfway through the movie, which makes her the smartest character in the film.
Together, they make up a Scooby-Doo gang without the charm, dog, or functioning brain cells.
The Scares: Poltergeist for People Who Find Unsolved Mysteries Too Intense
Almost immediately, Debbie hears creepy noises from the basement. Marvin, being a psychologist, tells her it’s all in her head. Because nothing says “supportive husband” like gaslighting your wife while you both sleep above a murder booth.
Then we get poltergeist activity: random noises, stuff falling over, eggs exploding (a trend in bad horror films, apparently), and nightmares so vague they feel like stock footage. The scariest thing is Mrs. Moriarty, the eccentric ex-church secretary who keeps wandering in to deliver cryptic exposition. She’s like the human version of a “Beware!” sign nailed to a tree. Naturally, she dies by being thrown down the basement stairs. Honestly, it’s a relief—she looked tired of explaining the plot.
Confession: This Movie Sins Against Horror
The confession booth itself is the film’s “big scary object.” You know, like the lamp in Amityville 4. Except less creative. This thing just sits there, waiting for characters to either sit inside it or have visions about it. If you ever wanted to watch a horror movie where the villain is basically Catholic furniture, congratulations, your prayers have been answered.
Frankly, Frank is Possessed
Midway through, the film decides it needs a villain, so Frank gets possessed by the illegitimate son of the murdered priest. Yes, that’s the twist: the priest had a secret child with a parishioner, and the son shoots him for being a deadbeat dad. Nothing supernatural. Just family drama. Which somehow curses a house for decades.
Possessed Frank becomes the bad guy, lumbering around with the energy of a hungover uncle at Thanksgiving. He kills Mrs. Moriarty, menaces Debbie, and eventually gets nailed—literally—with a nail gun and stabbed with a cross. The showdown looks less like a battle with evil and more like a very awkward home renovation accident.
Performances: Horror by People Who Look Like They’d Rather Be Anywhere Else
Kim Coates deserves a medal for surviving this. He went on to Sons of Anarchy and Hollywood respectability, but here he spends half the movie frowning and the other half being possessed by the least intimidating ghost in cinema history. Dawna Wightman as Debbie does her best, but her constant shrieking makes you root for the booth. And Marvin? David Stein plays him with all the charisma of a tax form.
Even the ghost seems bored. If you listen closely, you can almost hear it sigh, “Why am I haunting this house? Where’s the sequel where I get to haunt a chainsaw?”
The Pacing: More Dead Air Than a Broken Radio
This movie is 90 minutes long but feels like a weekend retreat in purgatory. Scenes drag. People talk. Marvin psychoanalyzes his wife while ignoring that half the house is actively trying to kill them. Even the deaths are uninspired—falling down stairs, getting nailed, strangled. The franchise started with walls bleeding and flies swarming; now we’re down to OSHA violations.
The Ending: Confession Booth Ex Machina
The climax tries for intensity but delivers comedy. Debbie burns Frank’s face, nails him, stabs him with a processional cross, and still he won’t die. By the time he finally drops, you’re begging the credits to roll. Then a detective shows Debbie a photo of the illegitimate son and asks if it’s hers. She replies, “It belongs to the house.” Which is supposed to be chilling, but instead sounds like a bad real estate ad.
The Real Curse: Watching This Movie
The scariest part of The Amityville Curse isn’t the ghosts, the priest’s illegitimate son, or the confession booth—it’s that someone thought this script was worth filming. The production looks cheap, the scares are lazy, and the mythology makes less sense than a drunk sermon. Even Lucio Fulci, who once got falsely credited on The Red Monks, would’ve faked illness to avoid this gig.
By the fifth movie, the franchise had already jumped the shark, drowned it, resurrected it, and put it in a haunted fish tank. This one just nails the coffin shut, then asks if you’d like to confess how much time you’ve wasted.
Final Thoughts
The Amityville Curse is proof that horror franchises don’t die—they just get cheaper, duller, and more Canadian. It replaces atmosphere with drywall dust, replaces demons with daddy issues, and replaces terror with tedium.
If you’re a masochist, a completionist, or someone who thinks haunted furniture deserves more representation, by all means, watch it. Otherwise, confess your sins, say three Hail Marys, and never speak of this movie again.
