Editorials
Why ‘Amityville II: The Possession’ is Still So Uncomfortable to Watch
I remember being at my cousin’s house and one of his friends telling me about this movie he saw where this dude takes naked pictures of his sister, has sex with her, and then kills his entire family. Sounds absolutely horrific by not only early 1980’s cable standards, but pretty much now or any other time… right?
He didn’t give me a title, just that it had something to do with a haunted house. All that visualization percolated inside my mind until I finally saw Amityville II: The Possession on VHS. It didn’t disappoint. It was dark, hopeless, nihilistic, and evil. I wasn’t expecting anything like that because, in the first film, everybody just had the crap scared out of them, but they lived to tell the tale. Not only did the family in Amityville II die, but they were put through a ringer of Satanically amped up family dysfunction first.
This first sequel in the Amityville saga was penned by Tommy Lee Wallace. He’s no stranger to outlier sequels with his treatments of Halloween III, Fright Night II, not to mention this one. Amityville II beat Halloween III on the release date by about a month, back in 1982, but Druid sacrifice was way lighter fare than this.
Amityville II acted as a prequel to the first film. It deals with the fictional Montellis standing in for the real-life DeFeo family. The sweet deal the Lutzs got on the house by the water was a by-product of the mass murder of the DeFeo family that happened there first. It was alleged that the killer, Ronnie, and his sister, Dawn, had an incestuous relationship, and she was also an accomplice in the murders of the other family members. Things were also supposedly rocky between Ronnie and his father, and their relationship was constantly in a state of varying volatility. Those elements coupled with a demon possession arc made Amityville II one of the most unforgettable horror films I’ve ever seen. Somehow, it flew under the radar of scrutiny or controversy in an age of video nasties.
The Ronnie Defeo character, Sonny Montelli, means well, but never seems to measure up to his overbearing Dad, Anthony. Burt Young plays the family patriarch, and he’s the dad that everyone walks on eggshells around. He could be fine one second and slapping everyone around the next. Shockingly, a deleted scene included him anally raping Mrs. Montelli. It’s a strange dynamic in the beginning because the sympathy is with Sonny trying to respect his father, but now being old enough to not have to take his crap anymore. While everyone else is submissive, he’s the only one that stands up to him.
[Related] Why Amityville II: The Possession is Superior to The Amityville Horror
After pointing a gun at his dad during a family altercation, a voice comes through his headphones that asks him why he didn’t shoot that pig, and “dishonor thy father pigs” gets scrawled on the wall by some demonic, unseen hand. Every time I hear that term in regard to murder, I always go back to the Manson Family murders. I don’t know if it was intended here, but it definitely resonates. From there, Sonny hits a downward spiral and becomes the conduit for the evil that lives in the bowels of the basement.
What is by far the most controversial and hard to stomach part of Amityville II is the incestuous relationship between Sonny and his sister, Patricia. Dianne Franklin was also the virgin in The Last American Virgin that same year. I was way cooler with the douchy guy, Rick, taking her virginity instead of her brother. They loved each other with an uncomfortable closeness to start with anyway, and when Sonny becomes possessed, he seduces her in a skin-crawling faux photo shoot that always elicits an uncomfortable hover of the finger over fast forward – but it’s hard to look away because of the disbelief that it goes there. It cuts to another scene just before anything happens, but far more explicit scenes were shot that didn’t make the final cut. What’s left to the imagination is definitely effective enough.
Later, Patricia goes to confession and tells her family’s priest and says that her brother did it to hurt God. When this happens, you suddenly realize that this family has careened past the point of no return, and they’re not going to make it. Diane Franklin is ironically the best at playing virginal in every film where she loses her virginity and she exudes a tragic naïve vulnerability. Amityville II has a giallo pedigree by proxy from Italian director, Damiano Damiani. The fearlessness of crossing social mores shows, and the only other incestuous comparison I can make to it is the creepy kid/man and his buxom mom from Burial Ground.
When Sonny murders the family, what he and Patricia did seems even dirtier when he kills her too. In a day where we are used to hearing about psychotics holding rifles and roaming through corridors looking for someone to shoot next, fortunately, I’m not jaded enough to stop finding it just as shocking as a previous viewing.
I’m a big Tommy Lee Wallace fan, and I think for all of his unfairly maligned work, he was ahead of his time. Amityville II is by far the most terrifying of all the Amityville installments, and would not find a theater friendly R rating without some cuts even today.
When the light stuff in a movie deals with demon possession, that’s pretty hardcore.
There’s a lot of reading left to do in 2026, between the glut of summer releases and the approach of fall, when horror titles get a special push from publishers, but this has already been an incredible year for horror literature.
Some of the biggest names in the genre have turned in outstanding work, rising stars have made their mark, and we’re only halfway through the year.
To celebrate the midway point of 2026, with plenty of horror books still to come, we’re taking a look back at the best horror books we’ve read this year so far, listed alphabetically by author.
If you missed any of these books earlier in the year, consider this your reminder to catch up.
Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
A student running from a crime he may or may not have committed escapes to his father’s country home in Japan, only to find himself haunted by strange apparitions, while in the past, a young samurai tries to find salvation for her family and finds a door to the future instead. Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic begins with this dialogue between past and present, and then blossoms into so much more, a cross-time ghost story about old wounds and what it really takes to finally heal them. I got so happily lost in this one that I would have read at least 200 more pages.
Persona by Aoife Josie Clements
In this tale of shut-ins, sex workers, artists, and the horrors they both summon and recoil from, Aoife Josie Clements weaves something that feels less like a story to be experienced and more like a psychic wound to be endured, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Evocative in its prose and nightmarish in its imagery, Persona is a story of the masks we wear, and the understanding that not all of our masks are particularly pretty or even easy to breathe through. It’s a dense, literary, unnervingly vicious book, and while it’s already attracted an audience, it deserves a much bigger one.
Dead First by Johnny Compton
Johnny Compton’s latest novel opens with a throwing down of the gauntlet, a sequence that made me instantly think “How on Earth is he going to top this?” It’s a story that begins with a billionaire hiring a private investigator to determine why, despite trying in many brutal ways, he cannot die. That premise, and the scene which sets it all off, is so alluring and delightfully gruesome that you almost can’t believe it’s the way a book begins, and then Compton just keeps going, delivering a supernatural mystery that I could not put down.
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
A woman grieving for the life she wanted visits a mysterious island renowned for the healing salt its residents harvest and sell, seeking renewal and relief. What she finds instead is a strange cult with a twisted history with surprising resonance in her own life, and a people who are more than willing to grant the relief she wants, for a price. Laced with beautiful prose and moments of profound realization alongside folk and even cosmic horror, this is vintage Sarah Gailey.
Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus
If you love horror film history and analysis, Partially Devoured is an essential. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Kraus, the book is a deep dive into his favorite movie of all time, George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, complete with exhaustive research into the making of the film and passages of deeply moving memoir woven in. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the eerie music that opens the film is called while also bursting into tears at how horror movies can save your life, this is a must-read.
Wretch by Eric LaRocca
Our reigning King of Extreme Horror, Eric LaRocca weaves books of uncommon beauty out of the most nightmarish parts of humanity, and Wretch is no exception. The story of a grieving man who longs for relief and searches for it amid a strange support group that might be a cult, Wretch is a brutal journey into the darkest part of us all, and explores what salvation we might find when we get to the rotten core of the world and peel back its layers. LaRocca’s on a tear of great work right now that few other genre writers can match.
Headlights by CJ Leede
A mystery, a serial killer horror show, a tribute to Stephen King‘s The Shining. All of these things describe CJ Leede’s Headlights, and yet they don’t begin to cover the full breadth of horror awaiting you in this novel. The story of a former FBI agent drawn back into the cold case that haunts him most, it’s a shocker brimming over with vivid moments that’ll live behind your eyes. CJ Leede has now published three novels, and they’re all bangers, so it’s time to get on board if you haven’t already.
It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo has been one of our finest genre writers for years now, but It Came From Neverland is my favorite thing she’s written, and it’s not even close. A dark take on Peter Pan from the perspective of an adult Wendy Darling living in World War I-era London, Pelayo’s book works as both a satisfying horror narrative and a rich exploration of what it really means to never grow up. The horror never loses its potency, but it’s the search for the meaning behind the Peter Pan phenomenon in our own lives, and what we can do about it, that sticks with me most.
Filth Eaters by Ito Romo
Ito Romo’s Filth Eaters is a slim volume, one you can read in just a couple of hours if you’ve got the inclination, but it has the feel of a generation-spanning epic. The story of a breed of vampires born in Central America, the European vampires who encounter them, and the offspring they eventually produced, it spans centuries and packs loads of juicy lore into its pages while never losing its grip on character and narrative drive. I would read hundreds more pages of this world, but I’ll settle for this uncommonly grand-scale novella for now.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
A former pro gamer gets a job at a tech company to pilot a brain-dead human body across the country, and so Paul Tremblay’s sci-fi-horror juggernaut begins. Indebted to Philip K. Dick, the primal snarl of Harlan Ellison, and the quirky comedy of The Big Lebowski, and yet wholly original, this is a towering and ambitious novel by one of horror’s most respected voices. What starts as a high-concept tech thriller soon becomes a startling meditation on the value of stories, who gets to tell them, and what happens when we cede too much control to machines we don’t understand. It’s a stunner.
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