Director: Damiano Damiani
Screenplay: Tommy Lee Wallace, from the book “Murder In Amityville” by Hans HolzerStarring: James Olson, Burt Young, Rutanya Alda, Jack Magner, Diane Franklin
Release Date: September 24, 1982
AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION is a prequel to THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, detailing the events that lead young Sonny Montello (Olson) to brutally slay his entire family while under the influence of demonic possession. Director Damiano Damiani and writer Tommy Lee Wallace use this story to craft a supremely sinister film that wallows in every unpleasant step towards the utter destruction of a family that was barely hanging on to begin with.
The film opens with the Montelli’s, husband Anthony (Young), his wife Dolores (Alda), their oldest child Sonny (Olson), daughter Patricia (Franklin) and their two younger siblings moving into what appears to be the house of their dreams, the infamous house in the village of Amityville. Right off the bat it is clear that these people are doomed. Anthony is an abusive, overbearing brute of a man who relishes terrorizing and bullying his children over the slightest misstep, and Sonny is the only one with the guts to stand up to him. This is exacerbated by the immediate onset of poltergeist activity, set off when one of the movers discovers a secret chamber in the basement that seems to drop off into the very maw of Hell. The evil spirit that is unleashed prowls the hallways at night, snarling at crucifixes and scrawling blasphemies on the youngest children’s bedroom wall. Anthony blames the kids for the messages and goes on a rampage, threatening to beat them within an inch of their lives, until Sonny points a rifle at the base of his neck. It is obvious that this is not the first time the family dynamic has gotten this far out of hand, and the demon zeroes in on Sonny, possessing the young man and compelling him against his will to commit further blasphemous deeds, including a disturbing scene in which he engages in incest with his bewildered sister. Utterly devastated and wracked with guilt, Patricia attempts to explain what’s going on in her home to Father Tom (Andrew Prine). When the holy man fails to answer a desperate phone call from Patricia mere hours before Sonny guns her down along with the rest of the family, he is forced to deal with the guilt of his inaction, resolving to disobey the church’s orders in order to perform an exorcism on Sonny, who is now inhabits a jail cell awaiting trial for murder.
For it’s first hour AMITYVILL II: THE POSSESSION does a damn fine job of creating an atmosphere of oppressive evil that made me genuinely uncomfortable. In fact, it does it’s job a bit too well, as I haven’t been this skeeved out by a movie in quite some time. The spirit attacking the Montelli’s is indisputably evil, and so the filmmakers depict it doing unabashedly evil things. The scenes of domestic abuse spurred on by the poltergeist activity are bad enough, but when Sonny seduced his very confused fifteen-year-old sister I sincerely wished to crawl out of my skin, I felt so filthy for watching, and the very real traumatic aftermath of that episode increased my discomfort. Aiding in this general feeling of unease is some impressive photography, which relies on a roving steadicam to depict the demons nightly prowls through the darkened hallways of the house. The lighting and ungodly ambience of the hellish dungeon hidden behind a wall in the basement that acts as the demon’s dwelling, unsettled me a great deal, recalling a similar sinister subterranean antechamber in Lucio Fulci’s THE BEYOND. According to IMDB, Dardano Sacchetti, that film’s writer, did some uncredited work on the script for this film, which explains a great deal, as this flick carries with it the same sense of apocalyptic sacrilege and Lovecraft-ian otherness as many Italian horror films, particularly Fulci‘s. It’s a certain vibe that will certainly turn off most mainstream audiences, but which just so happens to strike a particular chord in my horror-loving brain that disturbs me deeply. I also appreciated how certain scares were achieved by images that only appear in the periphery of the frame, such as a bloody, seemingly inhuman arm that reaches towards Sonny out of the darkness of the demon’s den. The satanic surrealism on display is aided greatly by Lalo Schifrin’s haunting score, held over from the first film.
Where this flick falters for me is in the last forty minutes. Once Sonny commits his heinous act, the movie’s focus shifts to Father Tom’s attempts to reconcile his guilt over his failure to protect Patricia. At this point the movie becomes little more than a cheap rip-off of THE EXORCIST and a dozen other haunted house movies of the era. Father Tom argues with his superiors over the need for an exorcism, but unlike in William Friedkin’s film there is no real discussion of the philosophical implications of Sonny’s plight. The priest eventually springs Sonny from jail and performs the ritual in the film’s climax, and the filmmaker’s literally run down a checklist of clichés, from the wounds on Sonny’s body forming words as a plea for help, to the silly revelation that the house was initially built on an Indian burial ground and inhabited by a Salem witch. The finale even steals the blood flood scene from THE SHINING, and also features a nod to the unsettling monstrosities from the concluding moments of THE SENTINEL. While the special effects employed in these final scenes are neat, employing oodles of latex and air bladders, I was extremely let down by such lack of imagination after the promise of the film’s first half.
It seems to me that the movie should have ended with Sonny’s murderous rampage, as this feels like the true emotional climax the film has been building toward. The only scene from the last act that I feel is truly crucial to the story is a chilling moment where Father Tom stands outside the house on a chilly winter night some time after the murders. The whole scene is beautifully lit and photographed, contrasting the serenity of a gentle snowdrift against the darkness of the house as it looms in the background. As Tom contemplates, the front door swings open, and within the bowels of the house he can see the specter of Patricia, bathed in an eerie glow, her face a mask of sadness. This single moment, to me, perfectly sums up the tragic destruction of innocence wrought by the demon, and if the film had ended here I would have been perfectly content.
Alas, the film is what the film is, and while it is eerily effective at producing chills for most of it’s running time, it is obvious the movie’s producers pushed the director to make this into something that more closely resembled the exploitative shockers that were lighting the box office on fire at that time. This could have been a minor classic, but in the end it is a pretty good horror flick that starts off with lofty goals, but ultimately fumbles at the finish.
My Rating: 7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment