First came the very real massacre of the DeFeo family by one of their own, in 1974. Then, in 1977, came the best-selling book chronicling the ghostly terrors experienced by the Lutzes, the next family to occupy the DeFeo’s Long Island Dutch Colonial Revival with those distinctive eye-shaped windows. Then came the 1979 movie based on the book—by which time the haunting claims were being called into question. But who cares if The Amityville Horror is a hoax if it continues to fascinate audiences?
Hollywood, for one, has had zero issues with repeatedly rattling around the Red Room and looking for demonic pigs in the night. In the 46 years since that first film starring Margot Kidder and James Brolin, there have been dozens of sequels. The original series includes eight films, including a 3D entry, running through 1996’s The Amityville Dollhouse. (You can tell by that title alone that the stories did a fair amount of branching away from the original tale.)
Then, in 2005, we got the Ryan Reynolds-starring remake of the 1979 film, which sparked a fresh wave of sequels. Since 2011, there have also been dozens of independent releases using the Amityville name, many of which enter more fantastical and/or parody-based realms, including Amityville in Space and Amityville Christmas Vacation. In 2016, The Conjuring 2 also set a memorable scene in the Amityville house—as did last year’s fourth season of Chucky.
There are also several documentaries chronicling the house’s history, including the genuinely unsettling My Amityville Horror, focusing on one of the now-grown Lutz kids, who’s battled psychological demons his whole life as a result of his association with the story.
All of that is to say that we’re not surprised to hear that David F. Sandberg (Until Dawn, Annabelle: Creation, Lights Out, Shazam) will direct yet another take on The Amityville Horror. This is different than, as Deadline also reported, the Amityville project announced a few months back from the producers of Weapons and Heart Eyes. That one hails from Deadstream co-writers and co-directors Joseph and Vanessa Winter; it’s said to be “set apart from the film canon, with roots in the public domain folk tale.”
Deadline reports Sandberg’s film will be “a reimagining of the original horror classic” but provides no further story details. Considering so much imagination has already been applied to the Amityville case—Amityville Death Toilet is a thing that exists—you have to wonder what avenues are left to explore.
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