AMITYVILLE: IT'S ABOUT TIME (1992)
A film review by Mike Watson Copyright 1999 Mike Watson
Rating: 3 out of 5
This surprisingly good entry in the much maligned Amityville series of haunted house films is finely acted, cleverly written, and directed with some flair by Tony Randel whose other credits include HELLRAISER II
It's actually in the film's favour that the original Amityville house is only obliquely related to the premise of AMITYVILLE: IT'S ABOUT TIME. The writers have taken the more challenging option of crafting a fresher story, rather than simply recycling the horrors of the original film where the Kurtz family was driven from their home by maloevant spirits.
Jacob is an architect of housing developments who, after a visit to New York state (home of the infamous house), returns home to his family with a beautiful old clock salvaged from the said house when it was demolished. Needless to say, the clock is no ordinary timepiece, and before long the clock is attempting to possess its new home by causing hallucinations and weird shifts in time.
Not entirely original stuff, for sure, but there are two factors which elevate this film above your standard haunted house fare.
One is the characters. Writers Christopher Defaria and Antonio Toro create an interesting family situation here. Jacob's ex-lover Andrea plays a kind of surrogate mother to his two teenage kids, even though she doesn't live with them anymore. Shawn Weatherly gives a finely nuanced performance as Andrea, who struggles to keep everyone's sanity intact as reality begins to unravel. She is also wrestling with ambivalent feelings towards Jacob, who becomes increasingly unstable after being bed-ridden by a bizarre and savage dog attack. Further colour is added by Damon Martin as the teenage son Rusty. He loves is heavy metal but he's more sensitive than his peers give him credit for, as his friendship with the eccentric medium Iris demonstrates.
The film's other strong point is the inventive set pieces. In a highly erotic scene, the daughter Megan wakes during the night and plays with her reflection in the mirror, only to see her reflection take on the persona of a lover and reach out from the mirror to untie her blouse. Later on, when Andrea attempts to destroy the clock, the axe she's wielding lands in the wall instead, part of which crumbles away to reveal the insides of a gigantic timepiece, as if the clock had rooted itself in the house like a tree.
Perhaps the films most masterful scene features Andrea's new boyfriend Leonard, a pain-in-the-arse pychiatrist type who comes to stay with Andrea at the house while she is caring for the bed-ridden Jacob. Sitting in the kitchen as the microwave oven counts down a late night meal, the digital clock slurs to a standstill and he suddenly finds himself face to face Jacob on the other side of the kitchen table. Jacob questions the trembling Leonard about his interest in Andrea, and then produces a revolver. It's a wonderfully tense, edgy scene.
AMITYVILLE: IT'S ABOUT TIME isn't going to set the world on fire, but its a solid, imaginative thriller and deserves some attention. If, like me, you've always been suspicious of those direct-to-video releases that turn up on the shelves at your local video store, here's a movie that proves the old adage: don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
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