The Bella Thorne Amityville Film

 I read that Amityville: The Awakening (2017) had quite the rough going considering its production/release history left it sort of in hell, awaiting some sort of interest. That it basically just sort of came and went with no fanfare says a lot. I think Amityville fans are a unique brand of masochists. We do hope for just a decent film. Not even spectacular. Not even great. Just decent. You get some okay efforts. I personally enjoyed "Amityville: Dollhouse" (1996), for instance; this forgotten film rightfully doesn't have a title that reaches out and grabs you. It isn't easy to find, either...not that anybody is looking for it. But this is a good example of just how many off-shoots there are from that 1979 film and just the Amityville name itself. "The Awakening" has scenes that speak about the 1979 film as a fiction with Thorne and her new high school friends even watching it at night during one sequence involving the power going out. So this is essentially acknowledging the DeFeo murders, while still maintaining the theme of demonic evil existing within the walls of the "house with evil eyes".

Thorne's brother is basically brain dead and hooked to a machine keeping him alive. Thorne blames herself because of an incident involving her sending naughty pics of herself to someone who shared them and how his pursuit of the one responsible resulted in his injury. Whatever evil lives in the house uses her brother as a conduit. In a comatose state, the brother "awakens" and even speaks to her mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh, doing a lot with very little) and Thorne. A twisted body that is basically skin and bones (so puny you can see his skeletal frame poking out of his flesh!), her brother reaches out for help from a brain monitor that can "type". He begs her to kill him. No way Jennifer Jason Leigh will allow that, though. JJL lost her faith in God, decided to try the Amityville House's "Red Room" as a substitute for healing her son, and essentially invited evil to help him recover...yep, that was going to work out JUST FINE.

JJL can do disturbed very well. She's got that "desperate, clinging, obsessive" character locked down expertly. When her mom won't allow Thorne to thwart her efforts at giving her son a chance to not only live but "thrive", it will certainly complicate their lives. No way inviting evil to recover her son wouldn't cause repercussions...sure, she thought it through. 

Jennifer Morrison ("House"/"Once Upon a Time") is JJL's loyal sister, McKenna Grace ("Annabelle Comes Home" (2019), is Thorne's younger sister (the child in peril), Cameron Monaghan is the bedridden brother who eventually rises and recovers thanks to the Red Room but soon starts killing, with Thomas Mann (as the Amityville scholar) and Taylor Spreitler as high school students soon becoming Thorne's only friends. Kurtwood Smith, as a doctor who visits the house and has a demonic hallucination involving terrible CGI flies is absolutely wasted. Morrison, quite honestly, has some dialogue scenes with JJL and Thorne about Monaghan's condition (and happens to come to the house in a "wrong place, wrong time" scenario) but just doesn't have much to do that leaves any impact.

And the film, for me, just doesn't have any atmosphere and JJL, pointing a crucifix at her possessed and walking son with "Damn you to hell!" that is of no consequence frustrates me because it is just a waste of her talents as an actress. And she deserves better than some Amityville "meta" film that doesn't serve as anything more than a Bella Thorne vehicle, a production/release disaster that took too long to reach any public eyes. Dimension Films is listed as is Blumhouse, but I just don't think anyone really wanted to lay much claim to this failure.

The DirecTv synopsis for this film is very much different than the actual product the viewer gets: I believe the initial concept features a found footage Amityville film with news crew, clergy, and paranormal investigation and the awakening was those involved opening an evil through their actions! There is news footage at the end of the film describing how Monaghan's actions were claimed to be responsible for the fresh murders at the Amityville home while Kurtwood Smith's doctor refutes that. So Thorne is basically in the Ronnie DeFeo spot, even though Monaghan's fingerprints were on the shotgun.

I think you can see production alterations. It just felt like plenty of cooks in the kitchen looking to make a gourmet out of gruel. And if there had been confidence in the film, it wouldn't have been through such embattled release disruption. 2/5

*Badly needed is a score that doesn't feel cribbed from some Blumhouse product and the Amityville house never feels like a strong atmospheric character. For Thorne's fans, she does brood a lot, wear dark eye shadow and dress emo, and there is a scene where she's in just a shirt and panties.

**After sleeping on it a bit, I think the perfect eventual home for this is "Lifetime Movies". It felt very much like it could slide into a paranormal family drama marathon with a few tweaks in advertising. Its look and overall aesthetic feels more than a bit right for any marathon of flicks involving a family falling apart at the behest of an evil presence in a home. And Bella Thorne feels like an actress that will be prominent on that channel in ten years time.