Review: An Amityville Poltergeist

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2021
Images from the Internet

An Amityville Poltergeist (aka Don’t Sleep)
Directed by Calvin Morie McCarthy
Breaking Glass Pictures; 7th Street Productions
89 minutes, 2020 / 2021
www.bgpics.com/amityville-poltergeist /

By sheer coincidence, a few days before this writing, I viewed one of the director’s earlier works, Jesus I Was Evil (2018), on Tubi. It is a silly dark comedy slasher with a pseudo-religious bent that I enjoyed. So, when this one came up, I was glad to get the opportunity to view it. Let’s see if it is worth the watch.

Despite the Amityville name, the film was shot in Portland, OR. I grew up on Long Island, where the original Lutz house still stands and is a tourist trap (which is why it keeps getting resold, more than because of its reputation), but I will not take that personally (smiley emoji goes here, FYI). But the house does have the prerequisite double round-topped windows, so it is kosher…enough.

A shy young man in his twenties, Jim (Parris Bates, giving off a Justin Long/Jeepers Creepers period vibe with a whipsy, high-school ‘stashe) who is strapped for cash (could it be because he’s wearing a Joy Division tee, rather than New Order?), decides to take a job as a housesitter. You can already see where it is going, thematically. But with that title, what else would it be, and if you like this stuff, as I do, that should not matter.

Parris Bates

The house’s living occupant is an older woman, Eunice (stage actor and championship ballroom dancer Rebecca Kimble; is she related to a doctor who is looking for a killer with one hand? Sorry, bad joke…), whose son, Tony, believes her to be a bit messugga, but she warns Jim, in an almost When a Stranger Calls (1979) catchphrase, “I’m not afraid of someone breaking into the house, I’m afraid of what’s already in the house.” She’s seen staying the weekend with her daughter, Donna (Airisa Durand, who also did well as one of the profane leads in Jesus I Was Evil).

Jim has two toxic buddies who are a couple, the annoying pothead and masculinist Collin (Conor Austin), and his cute and oversexed girlfriend, Alyson (Sydney Winbush), who are certain to be phantasm fodder, hinted at by the prologue so I’m hopefully not giving anything away. I write this while still in the first act, so I’m not exactly sure, quite honestly. For example, Collin wears a tee that says “Bitches Be Trippin’” and she cell phones pictures of herself in various sexy attire (or none) to Collin (I notice that one of them is too far away to be a selfie and I don’t see a selfie-stick – is that still a thing? – so I wonder who took it…). Anyway, their personalities are so different from Jim’s, I wonder if they would be friends in real life. Another thing is, as a non-smoker myself, I could tell that these people were puffing, not inhaling. Made me laugh, especially in a scene between Alyson and Jim. That bein’ said, there is a lot of beer, wine and weed that gets absorbed in three or four days.

Sydney Winbush

As the second act starts when Jim is alone in the house which is just when you expect the spookies to start manifesting, and thankfully they do, indirectly at first and then it ramps up, as it should be. Most of the time it looks pretty good, I am happy to report, especially since the obvious budget constraints. Nice move.

There definitely are some serious questions that I have (sometimes I have trouble with reality vs. story), such as the first time Jim sees a Samara-like entity, he is still there the next day, and invites his couple friends to come over. For me? If I would have seen that, I would have pushed right past it, gone out the door, and said screw it, walking home if necessary. In the flow of this story, it’s closer to the first The Amityville Horror (1979) film in that the family obviously stayed too long after the creep factor started.

Jim is a braver man than I, and sticks it out. And throughout, there are a number of really well-done jump scares, be it spirits or soundtrack music, including one that uses kind of a well-worn trope, but still fun.

I am not going to lie, the film seems really slow in spots, and the timeline is at first confusing in a smoke and mirrors kind of way, even with (or because of) title cards with the day and time that pop up on occasion. But when the viewer (i.e., me) gets the gimmick, it is definitely an a-ha moment (no Norwegians involved, though) that makes it all click and the story becomes way more interesting. It is a wise style choice by the writer/director to which I tip a hat and almost insures a second viewing to catch what one missed the first time.

As it should, the third act ramps up significantly, and by the end I was really enjoying myself. Things are explained, origins are clarified and violence is ensured, but certainly not in ways one would expect. The last 15 minutes made up for the previous, though they are somewhat necessary to fully appreciate the outcome, even though some serious editing could have been done to shorten the film. For example, the first act could have been cut a bit, such as most of the conversation of Jim and Alyson sitting on a bed, toking.

A filter is used throughout, that has a bluish hue, sort of like looking at someone in a room where the only light is from an old, black and white television. This makes everything look a little darker. The murkier the tone, the better chance of some spooky action (it is the film’s “tell”). I understand what the director was trying to do, but perhaps it went a little too dim. It’s easy to make out everything, but it is also not as clear as it could have been. For me, this was the biggest flaw in the film, so that’s not bad, despite all my kvetching.

A subtheme of the film is sleep deprivation, and how it can affect the psyche. I know at least two people who have had psychotic breaks from lack of sleep over an extended period. This film plays a bit with that.

The original title was Don’t Sleep, but distributors love to overuse the word “Amityville” for the name (as they do with “Ouija”). I did a quick search and gave up counting at fifty. Sure, it is symbolic for evil ghost by name association, but because there are so many of them, it can easily get lost in the group, which is not fair to the film. And it ends up being time well spent.