The Amityville Legacy (2016)
** (out of 4)
A family are getting together for their father's birthday. One of the gifts given to him is an antique monkey toy but soon afterwards the father begins to act strange. It turns out this toy was once inside the Amityville house and could be the reason for that house's curse.
THE AMITYVILLE LEGACY is a very low-budget movie from directors Dustin Ferguson and Mike Johnson. I had previously watched DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT 2 and was surprised to see how much I enjoyed it even with its various flaws. I went into this movie with very low expectations because, well, let's be honest, the AMITYVILLE series has been an awful one and there have been countless bad movies that just borrowed the title to try and make people rent/buy it.
The film here has some decent performances from the cast and I'd argue that the director's do a nice job at keeping everything movie. A lot of times horror films like this just get to be downright slow and boring but that's really not the case here. It's well-made technically and it never gets boring. So, what is the problem with the film? Well, it lasts just 69-minutes with the ending credits.
Normally I prefer movies like this to run short but honestly that's a tad bit too short because it seems like the movie is just getting started and then it's over. THE AMITYVILLE LEGACY, with that short running time, is certainly worth sitting through but it did need a bit more meat on its bones.