Horror Movie Review: The Amityville Moon (2021)

Amityville and werewolves… why the hell not? It’s not like we’ve not had every other kind of horror idea jammed into the misshapen hole that is the Amityville series.

Written and directed by Thomas J. Churchill, regular purveyors of movies with Amityville in the title will have taken note of that. As Churchill has visited Amityville before, where he introduced a vampire with The Amityville Harvest. Does that mean this movie and that one share some kind of connection? If so, we didn’t notice it.

This is yet another film with Amityville in the title and nothing else to connect to the infamous house on 112 Ocean Avenue.

Starring Alex Rinehart, Trey McCurley, David B. Meadows, Augie Duke, Michael Cervantes, Katarina Leigh Waters and Tuesday Knight. The Amityville Moon has a strong opening as two young women attempt to escape St. Matthias House of Rehabilitation. One manages to get out but the other is killed by something big and hairy. It’s a solid start that looks and feels quite werewolf-y.

With the girls now missing, a detective is assigned to find them. However, the staff of the centre aren’t very helpful and it immediately becomes clear that they’re hiding something. We know it’s a werewolf but just who exactly is the beast?

That’s the crux of The Amityville Moon’s story. A so-so mystery surrounding the who rather than the why. The problem with this film is that it has next to no other ideas so descends into farcical levels of constant dialogue. Jumping from one situation or scenario to another with tenuous connections and the constant feeling that we’re just treading water until the next one.

This might not be too bad if we had characters worth caring about or anyone was saying or doing anything of note but that’s not the case. The acting isn’t great, but few could make the banality of the dialogue work.

Are there any positives? Happily, yes and they relate to most of the visuals. The film’s use of darkness to hide the werewolf works nicely. When we do see it, it’s a pretty good-looking suit and has the savagery that most expect from the fabled beasties. This does mean we get blood and The Amityville Moon goes for practical over CGI thankfully. It’s just a shame that they’re a bit too stingy with it. A bit more liberal with the gore and we’d have been a lot happier.

So a good start and some decent effects, that is enough to make this one of the better Amityville-titled movies we’ve seen. It really isn’t saying much about the state of the franchise when this sort of trite is considered a high point in recent years though.