I don't think so, but get ready for The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes. Leave it to Hollywood to milk anything that's remotely successful for all its worth, as opposed to coming up with an actual original idea. In this case, its even worse than that. This is not only a rip-off of the first movie, already the subject of a reboot a mere six years ago, but this sequel is based as much on Paranormal Activity, a more recent successful horror film.
The whole premise is stupid to begin with. A young no-account murders his entire family and is sent to prison, whereupon a new family moves in the old house a few years later. The place proves to be haunted, whereupon it is eventually ascertained that the horrific poltergeist activity is the result of the house having been constructed over an ancient Indian burial ground. The restless spirits want revenge for whatever killed them, and so they take it out on the family and, as fate would have it, on the previous family, whose murderous oldest son was influenced by the other-worldly spirits of the dead.
Only it all turned out to be a big scam. The book by the author, who was the head of the family portrayed in the film, in fact perpetrated a hoax, and not a very good one at that. Not only was there never an Indian burial ground, but come to find out the Indian tribe in question never lived in the vicinity.
As if that were not bad enough, the movie all but ignored the fact that the original residents of the property, the DeFeo family, had connections to the Genovese crime family. Ronald DeFeo, the drug addled maniac who murdered his entire family, was the grand-nephew of Peter DeFeo, a Genovese caporegime. Ronald in fact initially alleged that his family was murdered by a hit man in the employ of the mobster, whom he claimed to fear.
In reality, Ronald murdered his father following a dispute, with some evidence suggesting his sister Dawn was a co-conspirator, though he claims to have murdered her after she took it on herself to murder the younger siblings, which he denies having wanted to do, and which he claims angered him. There were two other conspirators, one of whom is now dead, the other one who is now in Witness Protection, although it is unclear as to whether this is because of this case or something else.
It looks as though Ronald hoped to collect the insurance money and use his uncle as a fall guy, but it didn't work out. The police (some of whom might have been on the Genovese payroll to begin with and might have even been a direct associate of Peter DeFeo) saw through the lies due to repeated inconsistencies. Ronald DeFeo, now sixty years old, is still in prison where he will probably and should remain for the rest of his life.
But none of this is any more than an interesting side story in the book, and to all intents and purposes all but ignored in the films.
There are two ways of approaching this story. In point of fact, there is a documentary of the story which started filming last year, which should be interesting, while a fictional film based on the actual facts of the case might also be good, if done right.
For that matter, a film with the supernatural elements would be justified on the grounds of artistic license, but it should be woven around the actual true history of events. The fact that it would depart from the cannon of the original book and film is irrelevant, seeing as how it was all based on a corrupted version of historical events to begin with.
Hollywood is supposed to thrive on creativity, or so you would think, but the reality is, the bottom line business-end barely tolerates creativity. Films like this, like so many others, is a sure sign that their bread and butter is more aptly described as fluff.
Granted, if this film is done as good as can be expected on a technical level, It might take courage for some poor souls to sit all the way through it. But it takes a pure coward to make a film like this one.
