a review of 鬼哭神嚎2之入魔

HOOPTOBER OCHO NIGHT SEVEN: I'd managed to steer clear of the Amityville movies for years, largely on the basis that they sounded a little dull compared to the more colorful Freddy/Jason type slashers that were popular when I was a little kid. Now that I'm finally watching these movies (don't worry, I'm only doing the numbered ones) I found that this was definitely true of the first movie, which felt like bland Sears catalog-hued leftovers of other, better '70s haunted house/occult horror movies. On the other hand, Amityville II has the opposite problem: It's not at all boring, but that's mainly by virtue of being so utterly miscalculated that I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the next inexplicable storytelling choice. Whether that's playing up the dysfunctional nature of the family to an extent where it's legitimately hard to tell if they're under an evil influence or this is just who they are, or the introduction of a wholly off-putting brother-sister incest subplot, or the way the movie basically turns into a subpar knockoff of The Exorcist in the last half hour, there's a lot to gawk at here.