Amityville II: The Possession

My 2011 Xmas horror film :-) … A very pleasant surprise and as good as the excellent first part. Basically, I’ve reached a stage where I’m slowly losing faith that I’m going to discover a horror film from the 1970s and later that I don’t know and that will thrill me, and the second Amityville has taken taken me out of that error (if only it happened more often). I certainly recommend this sequel. (29/12/2011)

First of all, I have to mention the unfortunate casting decision to put Burt Young in one of the main roles, a guy who never knew how to act and was barely good enough for small roles, and here he is looking like he has a pain in the ass the whole time. Otherwise it was better than I would have expected thanks largely to Damiano Damiani's directorial skill. It's a film of two halves, and the climax comes about halfway through, where Damiani does a great job of spiking the tension and playing with the camera and the sound. There's also some of that Italian sleaze, so there's a flash of gore here and there, and on top of that unexpected incest between two siblings. But then for the rest of the film it devolves into a rather uninspiring variation on The Exorcist, which is a shame because here Damiani has hit his ceiling and doesn't bring anything more to the film. The ending with the exploding latex is like something out of a Troma movie. (13/09/2023)

The film "Amityville 2: The Possession" is a different movie than the first installment, and that is a good thing because it is a good film. The horror here intensifies smoothly, escalating in various forms, and you truly aren't sure what is really going on with Sonny's character. This is very well done and it has the right impact on the viewer. Additionally, the screenplay is good, it has momentum and doesn't bore you until the very end. I must admit, I did not expect this from the second installment. (01/01/2015)