Director/Producer – John R. Walker, Screenplay – Steve Hardy, Story – Steve Hardy & John R. Walker, Photography – Matt Hickinbottom, Makeup Effects – Rhodri Jones. Production Company – Scrapfilms.
Cast
Monèle LeStrat (Fawn Harriman), Linden Baker (Kyle Blaker), Eva Kwok (Indira ‘Indy’ Divani), Logan Russell (Jevan Baker), Kennie Benoit (Matteus ‘Natt’ Darnell), Hollie Anne Kornik (Wendy Shardlow), John R. Walker (Victor Stewart), Gary Martin (Elliot Saunders), Ania Marson (Celia Nightingale), Tiana Diehl (Dorothy Felix), Leslie Scoble (Karen), Spencer Banks (Reverend Simon Randall), Cheryl Burfield (Liz Randall), Melissa Borkent (Jean Harriman), Mike Reader (Frank Harriman)
Plot
In the town of Dannemora, high school teenager Fawn Harriman tells her geography teacher Victor Stewart that she has inherited the Roxy Theater in the nearby town of Amityville from her late parents. Fawn, her boyfriend Kyle, his brother Jevan and a couple of friends decide to head to the Roxy and spend the weekend hanging out. Settling in, they are soon spooked by occurrences around the theatre, while also meeting the Goth girl Wendy who has been squatting there. At the same time, Victor sets out on a quest to uncover the history of the theatre and Amityville.
The Amityville Horror (1979) was quite a success in its day. It was based on a 1977 book that made claims to be a true story about a family that stayed in a haunted house for 28 days before being driven out, although the claims were later proven to be a hoax. The success of the film led to a number of sequels and then a large body of other films of increasingly slimmer to no connection to the original selling themselves with the Amityville name. (See below for the other Amityville films).
Amityville Playhouse was the first film as director for the British John R. Walker who subsequently went on to make Ouijageist (2018) and 5G Zombies (2020). Walker has also produced several other low-budget films and made quite a number of acting appearances, including in a surprising number of other Amityville films. Walker can also be spotted on screen here in the role the bespectacled geography teacher who goes on a quest to find the history of the playhouse.
John R. Walker’s direction is strictly average. His shot placements are predictable and pedestrian – he does nothing throughout to create atmosphere or anything spooky (not that one could say anything different about most of the other films using the Amityville name, which are to a single one routine usually haunted house works). Crucially, Amityville Playhouse is a film where people hang around a haunted venue, but nothing much ever happens – we see a body seem to fall over the balcony, one or two hallucinations, a few shadows moving – and that is about it.
(l to r) Hollie Anne Kornik, Eva Kwok, Kennie Benoit, Logan Russell, Monèle LeStrat and Linden Baker trapped in the haunted Amityville playhouse
It wasn’t long into Amityville Playhouse before the characters switched me off altogether. They seem constantly bickering, or in the case of Eva Kwok, bitching about something. The worst of these is Linden Baker who seems to spend much of the film making derogatory jokes suggesting that his brother and friend are gay or putting down their intelligence. None of the performances are very good, the sole exception being Hollie Anne Kornik who creates something interesting if unexplored out of the Goth girl.
This vast profusion of Amityville films has strained to have some connection to the original Lutz house with clocks, lamps, doll’s houses, even vibrators and pieces of lumber taken from the house exerting a malign influence. Amityville Playhouse extends things to have the entire town of Amityville engaged in an occult conspiracy to sacrifice six human souls per year to a demon buried in a pit beneath the playhouse per year. (Over a 150-year period that comes out as 900 people going missing, which you cannot help but think would surely have created some suspicion among others in the area by now). The film’s trailer also has the gall to claim that the film is “inspired by true events,” which you would surely think would be cause enough for the Amityville locals to sue for being portrayed as a town of demon worshippers.
The other Amityville films consists of:- The Amityville Horror (1979), Amityville II: The Possession (1982), Amityville 3-D (1983) and Amityville: The Evil Escapes (1989). However, there have been a considerable number of other films also claiming connection – The Amityville Curse (1989), Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (1992), Amityville: A New Generation (1993), Amityville: Dollhouse (1996), The Amityville Haunting (2011), The Amityville Asylum (2013), Amityville Death House (2015), The Amityville Legacy (2016), Amityville: No Escape (2016), Amityville Terror (2016), Amityville: Vanishing Point (2016), Amityville Exorcism (2017), Amityville: The Awakening (2017), The Amityville Murders (2018), Mt. Misery Road/Amityville: Mt. Misery Road (2018), The Dawn (2019), The Amityville Harvest (2020), Amityville Island (2020), Amityville Vibrator (2020), Witches of Amityville Academy (2020), Amityville Cop (2021), Amityville Cult (2021), Amityville Hex (2021), Amityville in the Hood (2021), The Amityville Moon (2021), Amityville Scarecrow (2021), The Amityville Exorcist (2022), Amityville in Space (2022), Amityville Karen (2022), Amityville in Space (2022), Amityville Thanksgiving (2022), Amityville Emanuelle (2023), Amityville Shark House (2023), Amityville Bigfoot (2024) and Amityville Webcam (2024). The Amityville Horror (2005) was a remake of the original. There have been several documentaries Amityville 2000/The Amityville Horror: 25 Years Later (2000), The Real Amityville Horror (2005) and Amityville: The Final Testament (2010), which tried to examine what happened in the house, while the parapsychological investigation into the house is also featured in The Conjuring 2 (2016).
