Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Review: Amityville: No Escape

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2019
Images from the Internet


Amityville: No Escape
Directed by Henrique Couto
New Dynamic / Camp Motion Pictures
80 minutes, 2016

Waynesville, OH, where this was shot, is a far cry from the Long Island-based Amityville, NY (approximately 666 miles away, actually), where the original Amityville novel and film took place. I’ve been through Amityville any number of times, usually along the Sunrise Highway or Merrick Avenue (Route 27A), and it’s remarkably suburban. Its parks are completely manicured and filled with baseball diamonds. Quite boring, actually.

The Amityville of this story, however, is on the edge of a deep, dark woods, opening up the possibility of a found footage wonderland filled with mystery, spirits and evil. This concept is way more fun than its reality, even though as with most found footage this is supposedly “based on the real tapes,” so let’s stick with this one, whatcha say?

Josh Miller and Joni Durian
Actually, the mild contrast of the reality of the Atlantic oceanside community with close neighbors and the fictional woods-based town is quite amusing, as there are wild animals and people with shotguns walking around in the No Escape version.

But there are also added juxtapositions within the story itself that enhance the mood and breaks up the walking-in-the-woods-by-camera-light syndrome. The timeframe is split into two groups. The first is of a woman, Lina (Julia Gomez) who moves into the house, and is preparing to send a VHS diary to her husband who is overseas in the military. She starts off perky, and as events occur that are straight out of Poltergeist (1982) and the Paranormal franchise, she gets affected by the strange goings on. If you can get past her annoying constant verbal “ummm” type ticks, her scenes are pretty effective.

Michael William Ralston and Alia Gabrielle Eckhardt
The other segment take place in the “now” (2016) as a group of friends decide to do a project to record themselves to see what “scares” them. And where better than Amityville; though a meta comment by a one character is essentially the confusion of why go there when there are haunted houses where they are. The core of the group is George (Josh Miller), who has “daddy issues,” his lovely and adoring girlfriend Sarah (Joni Durian), his snarky sister Elizabeth (Allison Egan), their vegan New Age pal Lisa (Alia Gabrielle Eckhardt, who also did the make-up FX), and the bearded pervy camera guy, Simon (Michael William Ralston).

Another flip is that the Lina sections are nearly all inside the house (with an occasional bit in the backyard), and the group is almost always in the woods except for a The Blair Witch Project (1999) moment indoors the supposed house. This is all very clever writing to not only break up the way the found footage is presented, but to be both claustrophobic and yet… not.

Allison Egan (right)
Is the film scary? Well, I think creepy is a better way of putting it. A spooky child that tends to appear and disappear is a nice way of playing with that, though I would have liked some kind of back story about her (i.e., I don’t remember her from the original Amityville story, though I do remember the pig face in the window).

There is no gore, but a nice amount of blood, and a surprising quantity of female nudity. I’m not complaining, mind you. One of the good things is that most of the effects are practical and make-up based.

The acting is well done, and a lot comes across as natural, even if a character is annoying, which is a bonus. For example, Miller’s “George” is often a demanding dick, which is polar opposite of the pathetic schlub he played so well in Couto’s 2016 comedy Nothing Good Ever Happens. Same with Durian, who is super-hyper in Couto’s 2019 Ouija Room, but here is more subtle and subdued (mostly). Even Gomez, with her “umm” tic, shows a range well, going from giddiness to abject fear.

Much of the cast is part of a collective in the Dayton area that shows up often in both Couto films and that of Dustin Mills, though some of the obvious usual actors seem to be missing here (who were probably busy with Mills). But that’s okay, since everyone did well.

Julia Gomez
While I won’t give away the ending (never do), there is an interesting twist that’s a bit of a head scratcher and a conversation starter for the viewer(s) that I respect.

Getting back to the use of the found footage trope, what I liked about this film more than most others in the sub-genre is that while people may be walking in the woods with camera lights (how do they keep their batteries charged?), there is little running through the dark, which I find really annoying. Walking isn’t as bad on the eyes and stomach.

The copy of this film I reviewed was an online screener, but it is now available in Blu-ray.

Despite being very prolific and genre-jumping, Couto has once again shown that he knows his way around a film, and I look forward to seeing more of his output. And check out his numerous podcasts, which can be found linked on his Facebook page.




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