Amityville II: The Possession (1982)

Amityville II: The Possession (1982)

Directed by: Damiano Damiani

Starring: James Olson, Jack Magner, Diane Franklin

Usually I try to avoid watching sequels unless I’ve seen the movies leading up to it if I can help it, but I just kinda decided to watch this one even though it’s been a couple years since I saw the original Amityville Horror. So when I didn’t realize that this was supposed to be a prequel to the first movie until I read that movie poster there, I decided to blame it entirely on that. So there you go, it’s not my fault. It’s… my fault. Huh, that didn’t work very well.

As in Amityville Horror, a family moves into the Amityville house and things start to go weird. The oldest son starts hearing voices encouraging him to do horrible things, like kill his abusive dad and sleep with his sister. After some light possession and poltergeistism, the mom calls in a priest to bless the house, where he finds a massive evil (of course). When the possessed kid ends up killing his family, the priest attempts to do an exorcism, but it doesn’t really work all that well, so he ends up sacrificing himself to the demon in order to free the kid.

This movie is much more Exorcist than Amityville Horror, and there really isn’t anything remarkable about it if you’ve seen those two movies. There are some… interesting special effects at the end with the demon breaking out of the kid’s head, but it never really gets scary or anything. Also, the scene where the possessed kid sleeps with his sister is just horribly wrong and I actually started feeling really bad, haha. Other than that… nothing new. Priest vs. demon in a knock-down, drag-out duel of spiritual wits, I guess. Kinda meh.