Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
Released in Oct 2024, Amityville: Where The Echo Lives was the last Amityville film released last year. Written by Simona Curkoska and Carlos Ayala (who also directs), the film shares a number of the defining qualifiers of the Amityville ‘series.’
- Cash-in Title: Like so many of the films that have adopted the moniker Amityville, this is a film with absolutely zero connection to the other films or even Amityville, NY itself. After it was acquired by Lionsgate, the title was changed from The Girl from the Other Side, which is a significantly more appropriate title.
- Lackadaisical Editing: What is your tolerance for scenes that drag on without purpose? Sure, this is no Amityville Backpack where the editor seemingly went for lunch and never told anyone, but there are whole scenes that build anticipation that something is going to happen and then they simply…drag on.
- A Short in Feature Form: There are several Amityville films that would be better served as shorts. Alas many of them are stretched out to feature length because it remains a pre-requisite to sell the movie to Tubi (and let’s face it: if you’re making an Amityville film, you’re usually in it for the money, not the art). Still, there’s absolutely no justification for Amityville: Where The Echo Lives’ paper-thin premise to clock in at nearly 90 excruciating minutes. Even Nick Box had the decency to cap his trio of cash-grab titles at ~60 minutes!
So what is Amityville: Where The Echo Lives even about? After a first watch, you might find yourself struggling to answer such a question. It is ostensibly about 28-year-old Heather West (Sarah McDonald), a paranormal investigator with questionable credentials and dead daddy issues. Heather’s father died a year earlier (in 2017) and an intertitle informs us that she has struggled with her sobriety in the intervening year, though she is only shown drinking a few times throughout the film.*
*I don’t mean to sound glib about a disease like alcoholism, but Curkoska and Ayala barely have an interest in exploring Sarah’s addiction beyond a few casual references, which begs the question why they felt the need to include it. Like many things in Amityville: Where The Echo Lies, this is a subplot that simply…is. There’s no inherent point or development; it just exists in the film.
Heather’s interest in the paranormal, as well as her gently unmoored current state of mind are conveyed in a multiplicity of ways. This includes the aforementioned intertitles, which sometimes take the form of Heather’s stream of consciousness poetry, as well as voice-over and confessional style recordings, which are shot in direct address to the camera like a reality TV and/or social media posts.
It’s not so much that Heather is good at her job (in fact she struggles to drum up work), but rather that she feels obliged to continue the family tradition. An intertitle reveals her father was a well-known paranormal investigator and Heather admits in one confessional video that she and her father talked about the spirit realm “all of the time” and she promised her father she would work in the field.
All of this (mostly meaningless) character exposition is wrapped around Heather’s main case, which is outlined in an info dump of written exposition at the start of the film. In 1999 (or 19 years earlier in the world of the film), a young girl named Maryanne (Breanna Rossi) was killed by a serial killer named Ronny Busik and her body was never recovered. There’s plenty of extra information (none of which ultimately matters to the narrative), but Heather’s exploration of the attic of a woman named Rosa inevitably ties into Maryanne’s murder.
This is confirmed in both Heather’s spectral readings and – more concretely – by whispers from Maryanne, which persist into Heather’s dreams, and occasionally her shower. This sounds far more interesting than it actually is: 98% of the film is McDonald standing or sitting around, talking to herself, her equipment, or John.
In a bizarre creative decision (and counter to how these narratives traditionally unfold), Maryanne’s body is never discovered. The film ends with Heather being inundated with visions – both sleeping and awake – of Maryanne’s death, but the film effectively ends with Heather “leading” Maryanne by the hand into the light. Apparently that’s all it took to put her soul (and maybe Heather’s?) at rest.
This does not a 90 minute movie make, though. Amityville: Where the Echo Lives is just another in a long line of films in the “franchise” that overstay their welcome. It’s exceedingly boring and without the advent of a shit-talking turkey or the stupidity of an exploding backpack, there’s simply nothing here worth watching. This is a flat-out dud.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Bad Acting: There’s barely enough material here to work with and the script admittedly does her no favors, but McDonald is out of her depth anchoring a film. Heather is an extremely dull character, and McDonald’s performance fails to imbue her with anything unique or memorable. Heather isn’t funny or sad or driven; like so much of the film, she simply…is. And then you saddle the actor with dialogue like “Why am I not afraid?” or treacly closing lines like “We see the light when we come into this world and we should see it when we leave it.” No one could have saved that.
- Costume Choices: There’s a recurring series of intertitles called ‘Contact Session’ wherein Heather attempts to make contact with the ghost in Rosa’s attic. These sessions make sense: they communicate the passage of time, as well as Heather’s progression with the case. The problem is that McDonald’s hair and wardrobe are the exact same in every single one of these four sessions (because they were clearly shot all at the same time), which just speaks to the lack of care and attention on the film.
- Data Collection: One of the reasons that the film is so dull is a) the lack of set pieces (seriously: there’s perhaps 1-2?) and b) so much of the runtime is dedication to Heather sitting around recording spectral voices and/or movement. There’s not much excitement to be found in a person standing or sitting in silence with a camera or a microphone when nothing happens.
- Tarot Reading: Like so many horror films, there’s a brief sequence where Heather visits Gigi the Tarot reader. Alas, like so many other unimportant developments in the film, Gigi pulls her cards, freaks out and orders Heather to leave. Nothing else happens and the scene/character are never referenced again. It’s a scene in this movie that simply…exists.
- Dream Visions: The most memorable visual in the film occurs when Heather dreams of Maryanne in the spectral realm. Ayala, who also acts as Cinematographer, Editor, Art Director, and handles Visual FX, uses a colored light strategy to highlight Heather’s living status (red & blue) compared to Maryanne (yellow/gold). While the floating space imagery looks a little too much like a screen saver, it’s one of the few times – outside of a red filtered shower – when something actually happens in the film.
- Wannabe Boyfriend? One of the aggravating superfluous elements in the film is Heather’s relationship with her friend/love interest John (Nick Barelli). Initially referenced in her first Contact Session, there are multiple scenes in which Heather counsels Nick about a girlfriend he’s having problems with that Heather clearly doesn’t approve of. This goes nowhere and John doesn’t factor into the last act of the film at all. If the character is intended to add depth to Heather’s backstory, it doesn’t work.
Next time: unless a new title drops, we’re down to two titles in this series. What’s interesting is that these are secret Amityville films. What does that mean? We’ll investigate next time when we examine 2015’s The Unspoken.