Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
We’ve finally arrived at the first of ten 2023 Amityville titles! First up is writer/director Jack Hunter II’s Amityville Ride-Share, a ~60 minute found footage film featuring loosely interconnected (or not) clips.
In some ways, Ride-Share feels reminiscent of the ill-advised pandemic title Amityville Hex, which exclusively featured YouTube creators doing their take on a viral video challenge (ironically several clips in Ride-Share feature this exact same idea, albeit under the challenge is under a different name and premise).
The difference between this and Hex, however, is that there appears to be a knowing wink of self-awareness to the material. And while that may be giving Hunter II and dialogue writer Dann Eudy too much credit, even if it is unintentional, the bizarre meta commentary about gimmicky, cash grab sequels makes Ride-Share more interesting in the long run.
The film begins with a disclaimer that the footage we’re about to see was found abandoned in an Amityville home and that “the video clips you are about to see may not make sense…” This is something of a challenge: it’s either Hunter II’s premature defence against criticism or it’s a hilarious acknowledgement of the “franchise”s notorious refusal to employ things like logic or continuity.
The first few video clips are cam footage from a ride share featuring a male driver and a middle aged female customer. The pair make uncomfortable small talk (she mentions she just got out of jail, and he asks how it was without a hint of irony). Suddenly the words “initiate sleep mode” appear on screen and the woman falls asleep. The driver’s face begins to morph back and forth with Henry (Hunter II himself), then the woman is driven to a crowded warehouse and asphyxiated with a garbage bag.
It’s a solid start for a film, but it quickly devolves into complete disarray. A man named Frank is called, who proceeds to alert a reporter named Kelly (Mary LeBlanc Zaunbrecher), but then Frank is bonked on the head by a clown and both he and the ride-share woman’s bodies disappear before Kelly arrives.
These opening scenes are emblematic of the film’s pros and (many) cons. The sound is rotten (the ride-share woman is barely audible), the “score” – five seconds of distortion on a loop – is abrasive, and the acting is often quite amateurish.
And yet there’s also a sense of unpredictability to Amityville Ride-Share. It’s rarely clear what, if anything, is important, and the constant whiplash between scenes, characters, and temporal setting often makes the low-budget found footage a perplexing mystery, a bizarre oddity, and/or (occasionally) legitimately unsettling.
Case in point: at one point Amityville Detective Whyte (Milton Cortez) appears in a black and white PSA on public access television to comment on the recent spate of murders of local teens, as well as the recent abduction of 15 year old Taylor Marks. Immediately following this, there is a prolonged sequence of handheld footage of the two kidnappers in long-haired wigs threatening the girl with a sickle; the effect has the same grainy quality of a real life hostage video or even a snuff film. (Think amateur The Poughkeepsie Tapes, albeit with garish CGI blood that don’t even come from Taylor’s amputated hand, but rather flows over the screen like a waterfall.)
Several clips reference urban legends, including the aforementioned YouTube viral challenge about the Red Knight, which is an obvious rip-off of Bloody Mary or Candyman.
Then there’s the final sequences, which feature a mother warning a group of girls at a slumber party about Buttons the Clown, who was killed Freddy Krueger-style by angry townspeople for pedophilic activities. This last bit is genuinely harrowing as Buttons and several other clowns are seen on black and white Amityville CCTV, stalking and abducting the girls from deserted streets.
While many of the clips go nowhere or are unconnected to each other, the Henry character pops up sporadically to yell and mug for the camera. Henry is a recurring character in Hunter II’s other films, and his appearances here feel (lightly) evocative of BOB from Twin Peaks. Between him and the diversity of the clips, Amityville Ride-Share sometimes feels like a series of bizarre creepy pastas about a town under siege by dark forces that take the appearance of clowns.
Which brings us to utterly baffling end credits, which begin…then pause so that Hunter II can include ten minutes (!) of trailers for his found footage “series” Paranoia Tapes. Initially these play like real trailers for fake movies (a la opening sequence of Scream 4), but IMDb genuinely lists these ~12 films as part of the “longest running found footage franchise in cinema history.”
What makes this so bizarre? The titles of the Paranoia Tapes bear a striking resemblance to the nonsensical pathway that films using the Amityville IP have taken. Consider some of the ridiculous titles, which include ‘Kennel House’ (entry 4), ‘Siren’ (entry 3), ‘DVD+’ and ‘DVD-’ (entries 8 & 9) and – the most Amityville-like of them all – ’06.06.06’ (Amityville 1992: It’s About Time anyone?)
The fact that these films seemingly dip into other horror subgenres, bear virtually no connection to each other outside of their titles (and the Henry character), and, for all intents and purposes, are basically just low-budget cash-grabs, is all very telling.
Is this Hunter II commenting on the Amityville series? Or he is simply a savvy filmmaker who hitched his own low budget found footage franchise to a larger IP, knowing that an Amityville film was more likely to break out than Paranoia Tapes? I bet it’s the latter, but considering the playful opening of the film, it seems clear that the writer/director has a sense of humor.
At the end of the day, Amityville Ride-Share is undeniably a crap shoot: technically the film is a total mess (sound, dialogue, performance) while the clips alternate between frustrating, barely watchable, and genuinely harrowing. It’s not a great film by any measure, but as a found footage exercise, it is…unique.
Next time: we jump ahead to March of 2023 with writer/director Evan Jacobs’ comedy Amityville Death Toilet.