The Amityville Asylum

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The Amityville Asylum
The Amityville Asylum film poster.png
Film poster
Directed by Andrew Jones
Written byAndrew Jones
Produced byAndrew Jones
StarringSophia Del Pizzo
Lee Bane
Jared Morgan
Eileen Daly
CinematographyVictoria Rodway
Edited byTom Perou
Music byJ. Andrew Jones
Production
companies
Independent Moving Pictures
North Bank Entertainment
Amityville Asylum Films
Distributed by4Digital Media
Release date
  • 3 June 2013 (2013-06-03)(United Kingdom)
Running time
88 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget$20,000 [1]

The Amityville Asylum (also known as The Nesting 2: Amityville Asylum) is a 2013 British horror film written and directed by Andrew Jones. It is the eleventh film to be inspired by Jay Anson's 1977 novel The Amityville Horror . [2] [3] Sophia Del Pizzo stars as Lisa Templeton, a young woman who is hired to work as a custodian at High Hopes Psychiatric Hospital, an asylum that was built on the site of a haunted house in Amityville, New York. [4]

Contents

Plot

In 1974, a cloaked figure gives Ronald DeFeo Jr. a shotgun, which DeFeo uses to kill all six of his relatives at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. Decades later, the house is torn down and replaced by the High Hopes Psychiatric Hospital, which has just hired a new custodian named Lisa Templeton. Lisa is given a tour of the hospital by the maintenance man, Delaney, and told that she will be responsible for cleaning Ward X, a wing which houses criminally insane murderers like the sexual sadist Jerry Kimble, cannibalistic vigilante Dennis Palmer, occultist Sadie Krenwinkel, and a "Patient X" who is implied to be DeFeo. On her first night working at the hospital, Lisa encounters the ghost of Allison DeFeo, she is reprimanded for reporting this to the incredulous head of security, Hardcastle, and is sexually harassed by an orderly named Pemberton.

Palmer escapes from his cell one night and kills Pemberton before cannibalizing Kimble. He is subsequently tortured with electroshock equipment by Pemberton's fellow orderlies, and when Lisa witnesses this, she is browbeaten into silence by Hardcastle. Lisa researches the history of Amityville and discovers that, back in the 18th century, the Satchem, a Native American cult, settled in the area after being run out of Salem by Christians. The Satchem believed that making annual sacrifices of six people would result in them being gifted with immortality by a God called the Dark Master. The Satchem were eventually wiped out by a witch hunter named John Underhill and buried in a mass grave on the site of what would later become 112 Ocean Avenue. Krenwinkel is a member of a modern-day cult that has adopted the beliefs of the Satchem.

Lisa learns that Doctor Elliot Mixter, the owner of High Hopes, testified at Krenwinkel's trial; when she brings Mixter evidence that Krenwinkel has somehow acquired occult paraphernalia and access to the internet, he is revealed to be in league with Krenwinkel, and has Lisa unlawfully committed to Ward X. Lisa is broken out of her cell by Delaney while Mixter arms Patient X with a shotgun and sends him on a rampage through High Hopes. Patient X murders Krenwinkel, Palmer, and Hardcastle before going after Lisa and Delaney, who encounter possessed patients (one of whom rips his own face off) and Allison's ghost while trying to flee High Hopes. After Patient X kills Delaney, he is killed by Lisa. Lisa confronts Mixter, who taunts her into attacking him, which results in Lisa being gunned down by the NYPD. The massacre at High Hopes is blamed on Lisa.

A year later, Mixter gives a television interview, during which he cheekily implies that he is now immortal while promoting his book, High Hopes, Broken Dreams.

Cast

Release

The film had a limited theatrical run, and was released on DVD and video on demand, by 4Digital Media in the United Kingdom in 2013. [5] The following year the film was released on DVD and video on demand in North America by Hannover House. [6]

Reception

John Marrone of Bloody Disgusting found The Amityville Asylum to be mediocre at best, offering mild praise to its performances while noting that its violence was anemic and its story was weak, and that all in all it felt like it was "pasted together on the fly with novice experimentation." [7] Horror News was similarly critical of the film, giving it a score of 1/5 while calling it an "under-cooked mess" with "a boring first and second act with a third act that promises far more than it delivers." [8] While Ed Blackadder of INFLUX Magazine was critical of the film's direction and writing and gave it a D grade, he conceded that it was still "somewhat watchable" and "better than most of the micro-budget schlock I sit through." [1] Tex Hula ranked The Amityville Asylum as the fifth best of the twenty-one Amityville films that he reviewed for Ain't It Cool News, and concluded his coverage of it by writing, "Yeah, I kind of liked this one. It was a surprise. It has more effort and ambition than most of the sequels. It has a ballsy ending that I really liked." [9]

Related Research Articles

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The Amityville Horror is a book by American author Jay Anson, published in September 1977. It is also the basis of a series of films released from 1979 onward. The book is based on the claims of paranormal experiences by the Lutz family, but has led to controversy and lawsuits over its truthfulness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronald DeFeo Jr.</span> American mass murderer (1951–2021)

Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. was an American mass murderer who was tried and convicted for the 1974 killings of his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters in Amityville, New York. Sentenced to six counts of 25 years to life, DeFeo died in prison on March 12, 2021. The case inspired the book and film versions of The Amityville Horror.

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<i>Amityville II: The Possession</i> 1982 film by Damiano Damiani

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Amityville: The Awakening is a 2017 American supernatural horror film written and directed by Franck Khalfoun and starring Bella Thorne, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Cameron Monaghan, Mckenna Grace, Thomas Mann, Taylor Spreitler, Jennifer Morrison, and Kurtwood Smith. It is the tenth installment of the Amityville film series and a direct sequel/metafilm taking place in the "real world" outside of the continuity of the series which establishes The Amityville Horror (1979), the sequels from 1982 to 1996, and the 2005 remake of the original film as fiction. Its plot follows a teenager who moves into 112 Ocean Avenue with her family, who shortly find themselves haunted by a demonic entity using her brain-dead twin brother's body as a vessel.

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<i>The Amityville Terror</i> 2016 American film

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<i>Amityville Exorcism</i> 2017 American film

Amityville Exorcism is a 2017 American horror film directed by Mark Polonia, and written by Billy D'Amato. It was released direct-to-video, and is the eighteenth film to be inspired by Jay Anson's 1977 novel The Amityville Horror. The film stars Jeff Kirkendall as Father Benna, a Catholic priest who, with the help of a troubled father played by James Carolus, performs exorcism on the man's daughter after the girl is possessed by a demon that originates from 112 Ocean Avenue, a haunted house in Amityville, New York. It was followed by two sequels, Amityville Island in 2020 and Amityville in Space in 2022.

<i>The Amityville Harvest</i> 2020 film by Thomas J. Churchill

The Amityville Harvest is a 2020 supernatural horror film written and directed by Thomas J. Churchill. The film stars Kyle Lowder, Sadie Katz, Brandon Alan Smith and Alexa Pellerin. It is the final film in the Amityville Horror film series in which Ronald DeFeo Jr. served as the real-life mass murderer before his death on March 12, 2021.

References

  1. 1 2 Blackadder, Ed (21 August 2013). "The Amityville Asylum (Review)". influxmagazine.com. INFLUX Magazine. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
  2. ↑ Robert E. Bartholomew and Joe Nickell (2015). American Hauntings: The True Stories behind Hollywood's Scariest Movies from The Exorcist to The Conjuring. Praeger. p. 96. ISBN   9781440839689 . Retrieved 5 March 2021.
  3. ↑ Christopher Berry-Dee (2020). Serial Killers at the Movies: My Intimate Talks with Mass Murderers who Became Stars of the Big Screen. Ad Lib Publishers. ISBN   9781913543839. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 5 March 2021.
  4. ↑ Miska, Brad (19 March 2013). "Enter the The Amityville Asylum Trailer, Loosely Based On 1974 Story..." bloody-disgusting.com. Bloody Disgusting . Retrieved 5 March 2021.
  5. ↑ Barton, Steve (2013). "Exclusive Teaser Trailer: The Amityville Asylum; First Distro News". dreadcentral.com. Dread Central . Retrieved 5 March 2021.
  6. ↑ Barton, Steve (2013). "The Amityville Asylum To Open Stateside". dreadcentral.com. Dread Central . Retrieved 5 March 2021.
  7. ↑ Marrone, John (15 January 2014). "[BD Review]The Amityville Asylum – Kill Them All". bloody-disgusting.com. Bloody Disgusting . Retrieved 3 March 2021.
  8. ↑ Rotten, Doc (13 October 2013). "Film Review - The Amityville Asylum (2013)". horrornews.net. Horror News. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
  9. ↑ Hula, Tex (4 February 2019). "AICN's Tex Hula Reviews The Amityville Murders and ALL other Amityville Films! A Look into Madness!". aintitcool.com. Ain't It Cool News . Retrieved 3 March 2021.
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