AMITYVILLE: A NEW GENERATION
Second-best of this silly series

  I've actually seen all six (I think it's six) of the Amityville movies that preceded this one, and part 2 was the only one I actually liked.  Why'd I keep going?  I dunno, I must've been bored, or drunk.  What year was it when I saw them, '95?  Yep.  Drunk.

Anyway, this one gives a little cause for hope, because not only does it pick up from that only good Amityville movie (instead of the clump of crap that followed it), but it has Terry O'Quinn in a small role.  How cool is that, eh?

A photographer (Ross Partridge) living in an urban studio apartment is given an ornate, ghoulishly-carved mirror by a derelict whose picture he takes.  Soon, all sorts of Omen-like "accidental" deaths happen, as this guy finds out just who that derelict was, and what the mirror wants.  Although it takes him most of the movie to figure out that the mirror actually wants something.  Meanwhile, O'Quinn plays a cop investigating these deaths.

Most everybody just does what they need to do - often including removing their tops, which is a plus.  O'Quinn is the only acting standout; he's slumming (even by the standards of an actor who is so often relegated to straight-to-video nonsense), but virtually by the definition of slumming, he's bringing some class to the affair.

There are a number of rewarding moments - many of them courtesy of a gallery of nasty, demon-depicting tapestries, through which characters aimlessly wander like a nightmare version of the more routine "chase through the hanging laundry" scene we see in every other movie.  I also like the ludicrously obvious plot device of how one artist constructs a sculpture involving a TV, a clock, and a loaded gun that will fire at the viewer of the TV "sometime before the millennium", but nobody knows when.

Still, what it all adds up to is a combination between an Omen movie and an Amityville movie - which probably shouldn't have you bouncing up and down with anticipation.  The most I'll remember about it a week from now is O'Quinn, and a hilarious ending where the crowd of people who bear witness to it conclude that it's performance art and applaud accordingly. (reminiscent of a scene in The Runestone)

Followed up by The Amityville Dollhouse, which is as non-promising a title as there ever was.

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