Review for The Amityville Legacy

(Originally posted on fight-evil.com)

*This is my first-time viewing of the film*

At an hour and six minutes (though really, 58 minutes, as everything afterwards are credits), this low-budget movie was able to fit a decent, and surprisingly dark, plot in.

The premise is simple enough. Celebrating his 50th birthday with his children, Mark, after unwrapping a toy monkey, slowly becomes influenced into butchering his children and their relations. For such a short film, there was no lack of additional relations to butcher.

Mark, being the good Catholic that he is, has five children. Two of the children have a significant other. And that's not mentioning Mark's mother, who also lives with him, or his late wife's sister and daughter, who are also visiting. So this movie has more than a few characters shoved in. But you know what? It manages to work despite that.

Though surprising, I was mostly able to keep each character separated, for the most part, which really helped out in the second half of the film. Speaking of which, given the fact the movie's quite short, most of the action doesn't occur until there's just twenty minutes left, so things tended to feel a bit rushed. The idea of a father going on a rampage and killing his children and others in the house was a fun one, though not the best executed on the budget constraints they had. That said, I actually rather enjoyed this one. An ultra-low quality film, and one that's not likely to appeal to most, but I don't see how it's much worse than many other films. 7/10.