‘Amityville: The Final Chapter’ Is a Technical Misfire [The Amityville IP]

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.”

Don’t you hate it when you make a list of 50+ films and then realize you missed one? Well folks, we’re circling back to 2021 (or 2015, depending on how you look at it), to cross off a title that was accidentally overlooked.

Geno McGahee’s Amityville: The Final Chapter (2021) was released under the title Sickle when it came out in 2015. Co-written by McGahee and Forris Day Jr, the pseudo-slasher supernatural film has a few interesting ideas…and none of the technical expertise or funds to pull it off.

In the cold open, a twelve-year old named Michael Hart is convicted of murdering his babysitter in the family’s kitchen. A disgruntled neighbour blames Satanism and rock music, then the narrative jumps ahead fifteen years as Michael, now in his late twenties and played by Logan Lopez, is being released back into society.

There’s a plot point about how Michael’s parents didn’t visit him and ultimately moved away upon the news of his release, but it never amounts to anything. Essentially we just need to know that Michael is an isolated, somewhat emotionally stunted, and ultimately misunderstood young man. Upon his release, Michael goes to live with his mostly non-judgmental mechanic uncle Bill (Dave Sauriol), though it’s not long before an odd man named Mr. Crane (Brent Northup) shows up, paying Michael exorbitant sums of money to spend time together. Red flags abound.

There’s also a secondary narrative in play, which involves a group of amateur ghost hunters who seize on Michael’s story as a gateway to fame and fortune. The group’s leadership is divided: Phil (Scott C. Day) wants to leave Michael alone, but opportunistic and predatory Susan (Renee Day) will do anything to take the group to the next level.

Narratively it’s not a bad set-up. There’s a fair amount of predictable developments, including Phil’s adult niece, Kim (Crystal Aya) developing a crush on Michael, as well as Franklin (Richard Smith), Michael’s friend/doctor/orderly, showing up unexpectedly in time to die. But overall, in terms of story, Amityville: The Final Chapter has a decent base foundation.

Alas it’s the other technical elements that fail the film, particularly the shoe-string budget and the film’s inability to execute most technical filmmaking elements properly. Here’s a quick list:

• In several outdoors scenes, there’s clearly audible static on the soundtrack that distracts from the dialogue.
• When one character shows someone a picture on their phone, there’s no insert shot of what they see; it’s just descriptive dialogue.
• Interior scenes lack all sense of geography, and characters often wander into frame as if they’ve been waiting for their cue. In several cases, that means characters appear in people’s homes without any sense of when, how or where they entered the house. People just appear in someone else’s kitchen all of the sudden!
• Establishing shots are often missing and several dialogue scenes are wholly comprised of shot-reverse-shots of exclusively tightly framed characters’ heads.

Unfortunately the film’s struggles extends to the acting, which is extremely amateurish across the board. Northup, in particular, is in a completely different film: he’s so broad and moustache-twirling, it would be delightfully hammy if there was any indication that it was intentional. Smith, meanwhile, is clearly reading all his lines from cue cards and Sauriol waffles between naturalism and extremely stilted depending on how emotional the character is in a given scene.

Aya and Lopez fare best and the film comes the closest to a legit enterprise when it explores their burgeoning romance. Alas the film keeps insisting on being a slasher film, complete with unconvincing demon mask and even less convincing stunt choreography. Or it tries its hands at paranormal events, which amounts to very cheap looking CGI and cupboards and doors opening and closing of their own accord (but always with part of it out of frame so that someone can manually perform the stunt).

There’s a kind of charm to this extremely lo-fi filmmaking effort, but Amityville: The Final Chapter is undeniably a bad movie. It’s gobbledygook and it’s not very watchable, so even if I didn’t mind a lot of it, I can’t in good conscience recommend it.

The Amityville IP Awards go to…

• In Name Only: It’s quite clear that this was not intended to be an ‘Amityville’ film: there’s an elaborate (read: wonky) mythology about humans acting as beacons for an inter-dimensional demon entity, Sickle (Martin DuPlessis) that arbitrarily shows up every once in a while to kill someone.
• Morning Talk Show: The Amityville “series” has an uneven history of depicting journalism, so it’s hardly surprising that Amityville: The Final Chapter is bookended by an odd trio of male radio hosts who gossip about Michael. This is clearly satire from McGahee and Day Jr because one character is referred to “Tim The News Guy” (Steve Nagle) by other characters. Another plays doubting Thomas to the third man’s bizarre rants which includes things like insisting Michael is “a gentle giant” (despite never having met him), that people protesting his release are “crybabies” and that Michael is welcome to live with him and/or that he would buy the murder house on “a handyman special.” It’s inane and bizarre…which more or less describes this movie.
• Lifetime Set Dressing: A recurring joke in my Lifetime reviews is that the really cheap entries tend to use show homes that are very poorly set-dressed. That’s the case for both Kim and Phil’s homes, which have bare walls. It’s almost as though no one actually lives there!
• Ineffectual Human Villain: Susan is undeniably the film’s real antagonist, but my favourite recurring bit is how wishy-washy she is. When she tries to entice the other paranormal investigators right after Phil has died, they call her a bitch, prompting her to immediately respond: “to hell with both of you. I don’t need either of you.” Similarly, in the climax, when Uncle Bill and Frankie arrive to rescue Michael, she claims they’re trespassing and orders them out. When they refuse, she just…immediately accepts it and backs down.
• Money Talks: My favourite throwaway motivation for Susan is that the show has sponsors, which means they have to deliver juicy content (Never mind that Phil mentioned earlier that they principally just work for his mom’s friends). Later, when Susan tries to take over leadership of the group, she woos them with the promise of big documentary money. Both examples are laughable: what small time paranormal group has sponsors? And what documentary is paying anyone big money? (Netflix?)
• Quickie Climax: Oddly enough, the climax comes and goes in the span of about three minutes. Three characters are murdered in quick succession by Sickle, then Crane (predictably) turns traitor in order to become the demon’s “beacon” on Earth. Then…we’re done. Apparently Crane was happy to simply let Kim and Michael walk out and no one was charged with the triple homicide?!
• The Final Chapter: Just like last time, the film’s name is inherently misleading because this is *definitely* not the last entry. But it’s such a classic horror move to name a “franchise” entry “The Final Chapter,” no?

Next time: let’s try a real Amityville slasher with the final release of 2023, writer/director Bobby Canipe Jr’s Amityville Ripper.

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