The Lutz family comes across a beautiful house for a very cheap price and moves in. The catch with the house is that one year earlier, Ronald DeFeo murdered his entire family while they were sleeping and then blamed it on voices telling him to do it. For the Lutz family, and George (Ryan Reynolds) in particular, this becomes the beginning of a nightmare.

He sees things and hears voices, sometimes he doesn’t believe his own eyes, and his mental health deteriorates. Is he losing his mind? Meanwhile, the daughter gets a new playmate named Jodie, except that Jodie belonged to the DeFeo family and is very much dead…

Long list of remakes

So, it was time for the latest in a long line of remakes from Hollywood. This one is quite similar to, for example, both the remake of Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the recently made Boogeyman in its visual style. The camera is all over the place, and it’s difficult not to think of music videos or commercials. Personally, I think this one is considerably better than both of the aforementioned films, but despite that, it doesn’t quite reach the original’s emphasis on suspense. It’s a rather boring film without necessarily being a poorly made one.

The actors are actually good, and the story is well told, despite falling into the trap of showing far too much on screen—as usual! Nobody would be happier than me if they stopped trying so damn hard to scare us. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—less is more!

Kind of similar to the original

Otherwise, quite a lot is recognizable from the original, which, incidentally, I’m not exactly a fan of (there, I’ve said it). Perhaps you notice a certain difference when it comes to the religious elements, which don’t have nearly as prominent a position here. A priest is indeed also ordered to leave the house here, but the film’s focus nevertheless lies elsewhere.

But despite everything, perhaps one should avoid comparing it with the original, and maybe you’re better off if you haven’t even seen it. If you watch this as a film in its own right, without comparisons, I think you’ll get considerably more out of it. By that I don’t mean that the film will stay with you long after it’s over, but rather that it’s decent entertainment during the 90 minutes the movie lasts.

The film claims to be based on a true story. I don’t know how much truth there is to the story, and I don’t know if I can be bothered to find out either.

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Tommy Snöberg Söderberg

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Autodidact film scholar and music-loving thinker who reads the occasional book.

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