The Movie Room

The Amityville Horror 1973, directed by Stuart Rosenberg

Rating: 8/10

When I was a teenager getting into horror movies, this was one that I really disliked—I thought it was boring and slow and not as scary as the book or as much campy fun as the remake. However, I am now much older and I can appreciate what this film has to offer.

One of my major issues with this movie when I was younger was that I didn’t like Margot Kidder in anything, as a side effect of thinking she was a terrible Lois Lane. While I still don’t love her as Lois Lane, I do think that she is fantastic in this movie and James Brolin is also doing great work. They really sell themselves as a loving couple in a few brief opening scenes and then their relationship’s deterioration is acted so well by the two of them. A lot of horror movies spend so much time showing the happy lives beforehand and then short-changing the transformation or get right to the bad stuff and you don’t know why the couple belongs together, but this movie does a fantastic job with this balance. What really helps it shine is how realistic they are; they are not the perfect couple, they are not happy-go-lucky, nor are they bickering and nasty. They are flawed, in love, and both sexy (and sexy together), and their relationships with the children in this marriage (hers from a previous relationship) are very well-sketched. The scene where the couple are struggling with sticky shelf-liner and where to hang the crucifix before giving up, grabbing some beers, and going out to play with the kids feels so lived-in and true to life in a way that similar scenes in the Conjuring films feel so staged and cliché. 

My other critique as a teen was how slow it felt, but watching it now it does not feel that slow. The effects are used sparingly, but that helps them become even more effective. There is some typical of its time editing at the beginning going back and forth between the previous murders and the real estate tour which I can see my younger self feeling cheesy, but now it feels fine; it definitely dates the film but not in a bad way. The same goes for a lot of the horror aspects of this film. Everything is done more than competently and it almost all works, it just doesn’t really seem to break much new ground. This movie is undeniably influential (especially for movies like The Conjuring) but it seems to be so more for how it does a good job putting together a bunch of already done stuff with good acting and great source material (the book is much scarier than the movie, even if both are completely fictional) instead of for doing something wholly original.

As so often happens, my teen self was wrong to discount this film. It may not be the greatest horror movie ever, but it is effective and spooky. I love when a movie does new and inventive things, but I also really respect when a film just does a well-worn formula really well, which is what happens here.