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This Under-Appreciated, 1982 Horror Film Is One of the Greatest Horror Sequels Ever
This month, we're taking a look at one of the most impressive (and underseen) sequels in horror history.
Welcome to Hidden Horrors of Peacock, a monthly column spotlighting off-the-beaten-path scary movies available to watch right now on NBCUniversal's streaming service. From cult classics to forgotten sequels to indie gems you've maybe never heard of, we've got you covered.
The Amityville franchise is one of horror's strangest, which is really saying something when you look at the whole landscape of the genre. A single, supposedly true story of a haunted house in New York has spawned dozens of movies ranging from dead-serious re-imaginings to outright parody, and the name "Amityville" has become synonymous with odd follow-ups to a single story of a single family.
But some of these films are more than just curiosities. In the immediate aftermath of the success of The Amityville Horror feature film, producers were looking for ways to continue the saga even after the Lutz family fled the house, and fortunately for them, there was extra source material to play with. In 1982, we got Amityville II: The Possession (now streaming on Peacock), a follow-up film that's more brutal, more frightening, and more unpredictable than its predecessor, and which still stands as one of the most striking horror sequels ever made.
Why Amityville II: The Possession is such an effective horror sequel
First things first: Despite the title, Amityville II is technically a prequel, a re-imagining of the real-life DeFeo Family murders that supposedly set in motion the paranormal events in Amityville. The story goes that the killer in that case, Ronald DeFeo Jr., was influenced by dark forces to murder his entire family in their sleep. So when it came time to make another Amityville horror film, the filmmakers essentially just decided to take that idea and dial it all the way up to 11.
The film follows the Montelli family, a fictionalized version of the DeFeos, who move into the house in the years before the Lutzes take up residence. It's a great house, but all is not well with this family. Patriarch Anthony (Burt Young) is abusive to both his children and his wife Dolores (Rutanya Alda), and the familial strife is exacerbated by the house itself. Strange things are happening in the Montelli home, and at first Anthony's anger is directed solely at his kids for messing up their new house. Soon, though, it becomes clear that dark forces are at work, and the whole family is in danger.
The "possession" of the title is directed at the family's oldest son, Sonny (Jack Magner), who wanders down to the basement and gets caught up in a very intimate way with the darkness of the house. Soon, the abusive, manipulative, terrifying one in the family is no longer the Montelli patriarch, as Sonny both tries to resist and delves deep into a very literal transformation.
That transformation, and the lengths that Sonny goes in the midst of it, makes up the more overt, supernatural horror of the film, and it's strikingly effective. Italian maestro Damiano Damiani slowly unspools the sinister elements of Sonny's new personality, gives them physical form, and then merges those elements with the real-life horror at work in the story of a son who will, the story tells us, eventually set out to murder his father. In The Amityville Horror, the elements of supernatural terror are always there, but they're more external, things the innocents within the story must react to. In The Possession, one of the characters is living that terror, complete with demonic facial contortions, and it's impossible for any character to escape.
It's that sense of focus on the juxtaposition between the real horrors of the family and the supernatural horrors of the house that makes The Possession so memorable. Of all the Amityville films, it is by far the most viscerally effective, the most uncomfortable to watch, and the most rooted in fears that we can recognize. It's the feeling that a person we've known our whole lives might really be a monster, dialed all the way up to 11, and that makes it a horror sequel more people should see.
Amityville II: The Possession is now streaming on Peacock.
