Fact or fiction or somewhere in between, the box-office smash The Amityville Horror and the Jay Anson best-seller from which it came are responsible for our nation’s collective consciousness surrounding the multiple murders in one Long Island home on Nov. 13, 1974, and the lingering phenomena reported to haunt it ever since. Among that “ever since” phase, the most famous is the focus of the 1979 movie: the short-term residence in 1975 of George and Kathy Lutz, and their three children.
In the documentary My Amityville Horror, eldest child Daniel Lutz recounts — to the sympathetic ears of psychologist Susan Bartell, to the camera of newbie filmmaker Eric Walter and to the curiosity of you, dear viewer — what the family went through in their 28 days at 112 Ocean Ave. Now a middle-aged father himself and a near-doppelgänger for actor Michael Chiklis (TV’s The Shield), Lutz is only just beginning to articulate what he still doesn’t understand, even with 35 years of hindsight.
Not everything that comes from his mouth can be filed under “complete sense,” but one thing is crystal-clear: He believes and buys in to his mother and stepfather’s story that ignited a cultural phenomenon for nearly four decades now (and more recently debunked as fraud in the name of greed). He also drops bombshells not included in Anson’s 1977 quasi-novel or its two screen adaptations (the blockbuster original or the less-successful 2005 remake): that Daniel found himself possessed, that he was physically abused by a priest, that he witnessed George demonstrating powers of telekinesis.
Experts hailing from both sides of the issue — hoax and truth — contribute their opinions as well, including parapsychologist Lorraine Warren (played by Vera Farmiga in The Conjuring franchise with more credibility than is deserved), who is interviewed while her identical twin roosters cock-a-doodle-doo in the background. Ultimately, My Amityville Horror offers no definitive answers — hell, how could it? — but the questions it raises, both old and new, undeniably hold interest. Draw your own conclusions; you’re apt to loan Walter’s documentary your attention regardless whether you believe a word of it or not. —Rod Lott