At this point, the Amityville franchise isn’t so much a series as it is a cry for help. Every year, a new low-budget film emerges, stapling the cursed address “112 Ocean Avenue” onto whatever half-baked idea a director found under their couch. Enter Amityville: No Escape — a found footage film that proves the only thing scarier than ghosts is a bad Wi-Fi signal.
The Horror of Endless Sequels
Directed by Henrique Couto (who must have done something terrible in a past life to deserve editing this), Amityville: No Escape marks the seventeenth entry inspired by Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror. Seventeenth. By now, the demonic house isn’t haunted — it’s just tired.
We’ve had Amityville Dollhouse, Amityville Death House, Amityville Vibrator (yes, that’s real), and now Amityville: No Escape, which feels like a cursed Zoom call between two timelines, neither of which contain a competent filmmaker.
Two Timelines, Zero Tension
The movie awkwardly splits itself between two stories — one set in 1997 and one in 2016 — connected only by the haunted house and a shared sense of creative exhaustion.
In 1997, we follow Lina (Julia Gomez), who moves into 112 Ocean Avenue to fix it up, record video diaries, and wait for her husband to return from the Army. It’s an admirable idea — a lonely woman documenting her slow descent into supernatural madness. Unfortunately, what we actually get is 40 minutes of her cleaning, sighing, and talking to a camcorder like a YouTuber with no subscribers.
Meanwhile, in 2016, George Harris (Josh Miller) decides to film a thesis on “fear” by dragging his friends into the woods near Amityville. Because nothing screams “academic rigor” like dying in found footage form.
His crew — girlfriend Sarah, sister Elizabeth, and friends Lisa and Simon — are a walking checklist of horror clichés: the skeptic, the believer, the overconfident boyfriend, the “I didn’t sign up for this” girl, and the guy who dies first because someone has to.
Found Footage, Lost Direction
The found footage format, when done well (Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project), immerses you in chaos. When done badly, as here, it just feels like watching someone’s vacation video filmed on a potato.
The camera is constantly shaking, panning, or aimed at the ground. At times, it looks like the cameraman was being chased by bees. The 1997 segments use a grainy VHS filter that screams “After Effects template,” while the 2016 footage looks like it was filmed on an old iPhone through a layer of despair.
And then there’s the editing — which suggests someone dumped all the footage into Windows Movie Maker, clicked “randomize,” and called it a day.
The Ghost of Dialogue Past
Let’s talk about the dialogue. Or rather, the noises people make that were intended to be dialogue.
Every line feels improvised, which might have worked if the cast had any idea what they were improvising toward. Instead, conversations sound like small talk between people trapped in an elevator — awkward pauses, meaningless questions, and constant mentions of being “really freaked out right now.”
Example:
George: “We just need to calm down and think.”
Sarah: “Think about what?”
George: “I don’t know! About fear!”
If Aristotle ever watched this movie, he’d claw his way out of his grave just to beat them to death with a tripod.
The Cast: Victims of a Bad Script
The performances range from wooden to petrified. Julia Gomez, as Lina, tries her best to act terrified, but her emotional range hovers between “mildly concerned” and “slightly inconvenienced.” Josh Miller’s George comes off less like a documentarian and more like a man explaining cryptocurrency at a dinner party.
Joni Durian, as Sarah, gets the unenviable task of crying a lot and looking scared while also carrying the camera — the found footage curse equivalent of doing all the heavy lifting in a group project.
The rest of the cast dies off with about as much fanfare as a dropped soda can. Even the ghosts seem bored.
Scares? No, Just Chairs
A good horror film builds dread. This one builds… confusion. Most of the “scares” involve doors creaking, flashlights flickering, or someone saying, “Did you hear that?” followed by nothing.
The ghostly child in white — because there’s always a ghostly child in white — pops up occasionally to stare ominously and lure people to their deaths. She’s about as menacing as a kid lost at Disneyland.
The woodsman character, who could’ve added a layer of intrigue, instead delivers his lines like he’s narrating a weather forecast. When his corpse later turns up disemboweled, it’s the only moment you’ll feel relief — not because it’s scary, but because it means he’s done talking.
The film’s attempt at tension is so limp it could be prescribed Viagra. Even the gunshot suicide at the end — a scene meant to shock — feels like someone forgot to yell “cut.”
The Ending: Time Travel for Dummies
By the finale, all narrative coherence has disintegrated faster than the franchise’s dignity. Sarah ends up in 112 Ocean Avenue (which apparently still exists and hasn’t been repossessed by the bank). George calmly shoots himself, fulfilling Sarah’s “greatest fear” — being left alone — which is more annoying than tragic, because she literally told him that two scenes earlier.
Then the movie cuts back to 1997, where the ghostly Lisa from 2016 appears in Lina’s timeline and says, “Tag, you’re it.”
This “twist” is supposed to be chilling, but instead it’s confusing. Are the timelines connected? Is the little girl Lisa’s ghost? Is this an interdimensional haunting, or just the world’s worst game of peekaboo? The movie doesn’t bother to explain, probably because the filmmakers realized they’d run out of runtime and caffeine.
The Production Values of a College Project
Amityville: No Escape was shot on a budget that could probably buy you a moderately nice dinner. Every set looks like someone’s cousin’s Airbnb. The “woods” are clearly a public park where you half-expect to see joggers pass by.
The sound mixing is atrocious — characters whisper one second and scream the next, making the experience feel like being yelled at through a malfunctioning baby monitor. The soundtrack? A series of droning hums that sound suspiciously like a neighbor’s lawnmower.
At 78 minutes, the film still feels long — not because it’s dense, but because time slows to a crawl when nothing happens. It’s less “Amityville: No Escape” and more “Amityville: Please Let Me Escape.”
A Franchise That’s Out of Gas (and Ghosts)
By this point, the Amityville name is just a label slapped on unrelated projects to sell copies to confused horror fans. The original haunted house might as well sue for defamation.
Henrique Couto has made better micro-budget horror films (Haunted House on Sorority Row, Scarewaves), but here he seems content to recycle every found-footage cliché known to man. The shaky camera, the panicked breathing, the “we’re lost in the woods” trope — it’s all here, just worse.
The real curse of Amityville isn’t demonic possession — it’s creative stagnation.
Final Verdict: 2/10 — “No Escape” From Mediocrity
Amityville: No Escape promises terror and delivers tedium. It’s a found footage film that finds nothing, a horror movie afraid of its own shadows, and a sequel so unnecessary that even the ghosts are phoning it in.
If the franchise keeps going at this rate, we’ll soon have Amityville: Wi-Fi Dead Zone, Amityville: Haunted Coffee Maker, and Amityville: No Audience.
The only truly frightening part of this film is realizing that somewhere, someone is probably already writing the eighteenth installment.
My advice? Skip this one. Burn the tape. Exorcise your DVD player if necessary. Because trust me — when it comes to Amityville: No Escape, you’re going to wish you had one.
