REVIEW: ‘My Amityville Horror’ revisits a history of disputed allegations

Most people enter the universe of the Amityville Horror by experiencing one of the well-known horror films or reading one of the books that have meticulously (and, some say, falsely) detailed the events surrounding the Lutz family on Long Island. That’s an interesting reality: For a supposed “true story,” most people have encountered the tale in the comfort of a movie theater or the safety of a couch.

Daniel Lutz, the oldest child from the infamous paranormal case, lives the “horror” day in and day out. His life has been fictionalized, but he’s living reality.

My Amityville Horror, the new documentary that follows Daniel and his stories, is a surprisingly intimate portrait of a man plagued by a series of incidents that played out in the 1970s. At times, it feels like he’s the “boy who cried wolf,” while other times it feels like he’s mixing up his memories as he deals with profound family problems.

Daniel, under the inspecting lens of director Eric Walter, is an uncomfortable presence. He’s prone to outbursts, anger and profanity — seemingly three seconds away from violence. He doesn’t like explaining himself, and he doesn’t seem to enjoy the many doubters in the world. At one point, he even verbally attacks the person behind the camera (presumably Walter) for asking a personal question.

The Amityville case is well known to most people, at least those who relish a good haunted house tale. In the bucolic community of a small Long Island town, terror struck in the 1970s. Within the confines of a seemingly beautiful house on the waterfront, multiple murders occurred (the so-called DeFeo murders). This left an uneasy feeling on the town and, in particular, the house in question. Later on, the Lutz family moved in, including Daniel, his two siblings, his mother and his stepfather. The family alleged that strange goings-on happened in the house, many of them supposedly paranormal in nature.

After the Lutz story emerged, investigators started looking into the case. Almost immediately, questions began to surface amid the unbelievable details. Was the stepfather (George Lutz) interested in the occult and thus familiar with the world of the paranormal? Was this a publicity stunt? Were these allegations influenced by the DeFeo murders?

For Daniel, the subject of the documentary, the details of the case are true and still present in his life. The young innocent man, who has now grown into an older angry man, believes his stepfather’s dealings in the occult helped open some type of portal. In the film, Daniel reports that many of the disputed details are true. Paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren (the subject of a new film coming out starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) is also interviewed, and although she can’t corroborate the details of what happened to the Lutz family, she believes something nefarious was in that house. A photograph from her archives appears to show a ghostly-looking boy, the image captured during Warren’s investigation with fellow journalists.

My Amityville Horror takes in all of the stories and tries to stay focused on Daniel’s interpretations of the events. We follow the man as he visits a therapist, Warren’s house in Connecticut, the original Amityville house and the investigative journalist assigned to the case. Throughout his conversations, he’s hostile and hurting, as if the events of the 1970s had just taken place.

The film proves to be an engaging portrait of how a person within the eye of a hurricane can be forever altered. Whether or not Daniel’s memories are accurate is secondary. Proving the veracity of the story is better left to the paranormal enthusiasts. Walter tries to keep everything a little more cerebral, as if he’s profiling a man caught up in the hoopla of the haunted-house tale, rather than the other way around. This makes for an intimate and surprisingly effective movie — one that scares and invigorates, one that leaves the question marks on the table, one that moves beyond truth and into the realm of perception.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• My Amityville Horror

• 2013

• Written and directed by Eric Walter

• Running time: 88 minutes

• Rating: