5.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.0 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
A single mother moves her three children into a haunted house, unaware of its bloody history.
Starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bella Thorne, Cameron Monaghan, Thomas Mann (V), Jennifer MorrisonHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 18% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
BDInfo
English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Region A (locked)
Movie | 2.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 2.0 |
While the underlying situation is certainly no laughing matter, I couldn’t help but have a kind of raised eyebrow bemusement when I received a delay notice about Amityville: The Awakening's Blu-ray release due to unspecified “issues with The Weinstein Company”. Perhaps like anyone who deigns to move into 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville: The Awakening seemed to have been cursed itself, with numerous delays “haunting” its actual theatrical release schedule. The Weinstein Company’s well publicized travails of late perhaps only add insult to injury, but the fact is Amityville: The Awakening has “issues” of its own which it’s never able to overcome, including a basic conceit that seems at least a little reminiscent of a similar device in the fairly recent Naomi Watts thriller Shut In. The Amityville franchise has frankly never offered paradigms of horror brilliance, but The Amityville Horror, Amityville II: The Possession and Amityville 3-D all played at least tangentially with the underlying true life horror of the murder of the DeFeo family in 1974, if only in explorations as to whether the stories about the focal house being “possessed” were factual or the figments of some enterprising folks’ imaginations. Amityville: The Awakening has arguably the least convincing tether to that underlying “true life” story, and as such it almost seems like an afterthought (or at best, a marketing strategy) to even locate this story in Amityville. But horror perhaps more than many other genres often relies on “known quantities” in terms of franchise titles and the like, and while not really all that salient to the actual story, the Amityville house and its assumed demonic influence on various people is at the core of this particular tale.
Amityville: The Awakening is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The IMDb lists the Canon 500 as having been utilized, with the results being generally very sharp and well detailed when lighting conditions allow. Unfortunately, large swaths of this film play out in either near darkness or (at times) actual complete darkness, and as such detail levels are fairly variable. Some of the darkest moments have virtually no shadow definition, perhaps by design. The nicely lit and often bright and even summery outdoor material actually pops quite well, with commendable sharpness and precision, and typically very high levels of fine detail. The palette is a little drab looking, especially in some of the interior scenes.
Amityville: The Awakening features a rather robust DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, one that combines expected startle effects with more nuanced placement of ambient environmental sounds that offer at times very evocative and creepy recreations of things going bump (and other sounds) in the night. There's some good differentiation in terms of the more cloistered environments inside the house and several outside scenes that are also utilized. Dialogue, score and effects are all rendered cleanly and well prioritized on this problem free track.
Okay, these final comments will perhaps tip over into the un-PC, something I unapologetically cop to since I have a pretty outrageous (and tolerant) sense of humor, but in this case the comparison I'll ultimately make is linked to a perhaps un-PC anecdote by none other than Jack Lemmon, so at least I'll be in good company should I be damned. On an old talk show whose specifics I frankly can't recall, Lemmon told what I personally found to be one of the funniest anecdotes ever, about his longtime friend and collaborator Walter Matthau. Evidently Lemmon, his wife, and Matthau and his wife liked to vacation together, except that the Matthaus were often bickering. They were on a train in Europe one day when the Matthaus really got into it, at which point Walter turned to his wife and said, "Now see what you've done? You've ruined my trip to Auschwitz!" That story has cracked me up for years, and in a similarly insouciant fashion one might imagine a worker at the beleaguered Weinstein Company berating a certain executive with a similar, "Now see what you've done? You've delayed Amityville: The Awakening!" Franchise completists or fans of the cast may have more tolerance for the middling effectiveness of this film, and those folks should be generally well pleased with the technical merits of this release.
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