Aptly enough for the superstitiously inclined, Amityville Playhouse is the 13th movie to carry the name of the unlucky upstate New York town that’s now become synonymous with schlocky horror films. You don’t have to have seen them all – or any – to suspect this latest Canadian-produced cash-in has a shot at being ranked among the worst of the franchise.
A gaggle of thoroughly obnoxious college students decide to spend the weekend in an abandoned Amityville cinema that one of the kids inherited from her dead parents. Of course it’s haunted and a bunch of bad stuff happens: bad special effects, deliciously lousy scriptwriting, cack-handed direction and, above all, truly atrocious acting, attaining a level of ineptitude and woodenness that would shame the cheapest amateur porn film.
In fact, it’s so bad one starts to wonder if it’s all not some kind of elaborate satanic joke that induces a kind of giddy, demonic hilarity.
