For more than two years, Joe Lipsett has dissected Amityville Horror films to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”

Welcome to entry 60 (!!!) of The Amityville IP. By now it should be clear that nearly everything can – and often is – an Amityville film.

• Triangle windows? Amityville film
• Flies and a priest? Amityville film
• Cursed object? Amityville film

As this little misadventure of an editorial series has progressed and the production budgets, aspirations, and narrative prowess of the entries have dwindled, it’s become clear that the easiest way to make a low-budget indie film is to lean into found footage. And if any “franchise” stood to benefit from a FF approach, it was Amityville.

We’ve seen it done before (to varying degrees of success). The Last Amityville Film? Great. Amityville Ride-Share? Kinda terrible, but possibly also genius. Ghosts of Amityville? Possibly a great short stretched to boring feature-length. Amityville: Mt. Misery Road? Insufferable.

The first FF entry, The Amityville Haunting, is the nearest equivalent to Amityville Void (2024), a feature-length film available on YouTube. In Haunting, the Benson family moves into the Amityville house and sets up a number of security cameras after strange incidents begin occurring. In addition to ceiling mounted cameras, teenager Tyler had his own handheld, and then there was night vision footage deployed for the after dark incidents.

Amityville Void employs a similar structure. The “micro to no budget” film hails from Take One Productions, which appears to be a collection of teenage siblings/cousins/friends who do riffs on their favourite horror films. Void tells the story of three brothers – Walker (the oldest), pre-teen Davis, and William (a child) – who aspire to spend the night in the haunted Amityville house and sell the footage for their show.

The film opens with text that immediately conveys which two properties it is pulling most directly from: “2 weeks ago 3 TV icons went missing, the 3 brothers from the show Paranormal Investigators. Police searched for them but only found their video camera. This is the footage.” Basically it’s Blair Witch meets Ghost Hunters.

What follows is a pretty standard amalgamation of the two source texts. The brothers explore the house, discover a snow globe music box that won’t shut off, a circle of hand drawn papers with a creepy incantation, and (the film’s single best visual) a mannequin wearing a clown mask.

There are a few major issues with the film. The first are the budgetary limitations, which forces Void to try and make everyday objects and decidedly non-scary events into full-blown supernatural occurrences (locked doors, bumps in the night, obviously handmade signage, etc). This would be more palatable if there were more of them, more variety, or if this were a short, but any tension or novelty is undone by Void‘s sluggish pacing. This is most evident in how the brothers pause to discuss each incident for what feels like five minutes.

Then there are the performances. These are clearly non-professional actors, and children to boot, so the quality is amateurish at best. Alas there isn’t much, if any, characterization to distinguish the brothers, particularly the youngest two. Walker is the domineering oldest, but aside from age and height, Davis and William are virtually interchangeable.

This is a problem because so little happens in the film and that’s without the issue being compounded by a significant amount of improv/ad-libbing. The back half of the film is dominated by Walker outlining their usual episodic format: first an EMF reading, then an Ouija board segment. Whenever he proposes something, however, they’re either missing the materials (the Ouija is recreated by…a white board) or the other two seem oblivious to what comes next. The narrative is clearly being made up as they go and the dialogue is unscripted, which makes for a frustrating watch when combined with poor acting, shallow characterizations, and a bland narrative.

This is very clearly a labour of DIY love. Amityville Void is a film made by a trio of kids who are just having fun with a camera, so it’s hard to be overly critical. If this were a short rather than a 69-minute feature, however, most of these criticisms would be less frustrating. I’m sure this is a fun watch for friends or family, but for folks who don’t have a relationship to the filmmakers, there’s simply nothing here.

The Amityville IP Awards go to…

• More Amityville Than Others: Despite having zero visual connection to the actual Amityville house, this is more of an Amityville film than other cash grabs because at least Walker mentions Amityville!
• Bad Dialogue: There’s a sequence around the 2/3 mark that exemplifies the film’s narrative, dialogue and acting issues. One of the younger brothers suggests it’s colder in one room, is immediately contradicted by Walker, and then goes “Oh, I guess you’re right.” It’s a complete non-starter that confirms the trio didn’t plan out what would happen or when. Around this point there’s also an exchange about the usual format of their show that we’re told happens in every episode: “I forgot the Ouija board.” “We always do that.” “I forgot.” <Siiiiigh> Digital film is cheap, kids! Call cut and rework the scene!
  • A stronger creative decision would have been to include a montage or footage from other episodes at the start of the film to give the audience a flavour of what an average episode of “Paranormal Investigators” looks like. This would have also allowed all three actors to get on the same page so that whole sections of the film weren’t made redundant by their uncertainty.
• Big money: At one point Walker tells his brothers that they’re being paid $100K each for the footage. By whom?! This is the most pressing question/development in the entire film!
• Creepy Clown: Arguably the most successful recurring visual in the film is the mannequin with the clown mask whose body moves in between shots. It’s a simple and well-worn trick, but Hell House LLC has proved how effective a creepy clown can be. Amityville Void would have done well to lean more into this visual.
• WTF Ending: Arguably the narrative’s biggest swing is its conclusion. Walker is briefly trapped in the house (it’s exhausting and disappointingly ineffective), but there’s an unexpected development when Davis (the middle brother) suddenly spouts CGI tentacles from his head and is gunned down in the driveway. The effect is clearly low budget computer graphics, but it is nonetheless a genuinely surprising moment.
• Switched Perspective: One aspect that mostly works is how the perspective switches between several different cameras (one is in colour; another is stark black and white). The B/W, in particularly, offers a rich contrast. It also features a distorted effect that impairs our visibility in a pleasurable way, forcing audiences to crane their necks to try and see what’s being obscured. Alas many of the dark basement sequences and/or when William (the youngest) is operating the camera are so dark or unwieldy that the footage is nearly impossible to decipher.
• Grammar and Punctuation: As someone who struggles with spelling and grammar, the opening text is simultaneously deeply relatable and also painful. Remember the golden rules: numbers under 10 are spelled, and commas go where you want a pause (“Two weeks ago, three kids…” not “2 weeks ago 3 kids…”).

Next time: I’ve managed to track down a MIA film, Tony Newton’s 2022 Amityville Exorcist (not to be confused with Mark Polonia’s Amityville Exorcism from 2017). It’s streaming on something called fawesome.tv (?) if you’re interested in watching along.