Random Streaming MOTW Review: The Amityville Legacy (2016)

"Clocking in at a whopping 66 minutes, this movie was about 80 minutes too long."

Every week, we sit down, surf through the Netflix and On Demands of the world, find ourselves a random, B-Grade Horror flick that we've never seen, and watch it. Sometimes we're surprised with how well they turn out, and sometimes they're just as bad as we expect them to be. 

Either way, it makes for a good time. This is one of those films.

You could argue that after the first one, there were no good movies in the Amityville Series. The 2nd one had its creepy moments, the third one was a bit of cheesy-bad 80's kitsch, and the remake was solid enough for a glossy Hollywood money grab, but entries like Amityville Theater, Amityville Asylum, or The Amityville Haunting were just abysmal.

We came across The Amityville Legacy while browsing Amazon Prime for something cheesy to watch, and being that one of us is an absolute Amityville fanatic (yes, she even loves the really, really bad sequels), we had no choice but to give it a go.

All I can say after watching it is that it's honestly not even right that this movie has the name Amityville in its title.

40 years after a red-tinted flashback that shows the original DeFeo murders (or at least some guy walking from room to room in a red hallway, shooting a shotgun), we see a bunch people driving to an isolated farmhouse in Nebraska (?!?) to attend a family reunion. Or maybe it's Dad's birthday. I think it might be both.

Everyone gives Dad his gifts, one of which happens to be a cymbal-banging monkey toy, which came from the Amityville Garage Sale (movie coming soon, I'm sure), and is possessed.  Or cursed. Either way, once Dad gets his presents, he starts to act irritable and is visited by the ghost of his dead father who urges him to kill everyone, because, haunted monkey.

Nothing Amityville-related at all ensues. 

WHY.

I really try not to rip on small, micro-budget movies like this that someone obviously spent their weekends off from their real jobs making, because even the worst of movies take time, effort, and passion to make, but man, this was a bad one. We spent our time watching it, so we're allowed to rant.

• First off, aside from the fact that the there was a model of the Amityville house used in the flashback at the beginning, there is nothing about this movie that has anything to do with the Amityville story. A cursed monkey toy bought at a garage sale that came from the DeFeo house? Listen, if you are going to make a cheap movie, that's fine, but if that cheap movie has Amityville in its title, at least have it be set in the house, or directly related to the original story.
• Also, if you're going to make a Horror movie where someone loses their mind and kills everyone around them, maybe show the murders. Almost none of the deaths in this movie happen on-screen, and there's barely even any on-screen blood, which would have at least made the movie somewhat redeemable. Hell, squeeze some ketchup on someone and film them laying there playing dead. At least that would have been something.
• The acting in this movie is really bad, not that anything else about it is particularly good, but given that so much of this hour-long flick is nothing but talking, the lack of quality really stands out. And hurts. I'm pretty sure that someone in the crew got their Nana to star in this one. I really mean that.
• No violence, no nudity, bad actors working off of a bad script... what exactly is supposed to be the draw here? I'm not even trying to be an asshole about it, but what was the point?
• Without the 6-minute long credit crawl at the end, and it's a sloooow crawl, this movie would have been 57-minutes long. I guess that pretty much says it all.

"KILL THEM OFF-SCREEN!"

These Amityville sequels really need to stop, or at the very least, they need to get a metric shit-ton better.

SO ZORRO REALLY IS THE GAY BLADE. HUH.

Look, making a movie is a labor of love, especially when it comes to small, micro-budget flicks like this. I'm sure everyone tried real hard to do their best here, and I give them credit for that, but The Amityville Legacy has no connection to the original, isn't very well-made or acted at all, is devoid of Horror, and it just doesn't have much of a point.

Even for fans of bad movies, this one is a tough watch.

The Amityville Legacy is available now on VOD and streaming free via Amazon Prime.

The ladies of The Amityville Legacy.