Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
The last couple entries in this editorial series have examined two of the three titles released by executive producer, writer, and director Nick Box released the week of April 13, 2023.
Amityville Frankenstein is abysmal while Amityville Job Interview has a kernel of an interesting idea, but isn’t wholly successful. So how does Box’s third entry, Amityville Elevator, fare?
Well, much like Job Interview, there’s a glimmer of promise here, but the film is let down by the usual padded runtime and lack of character and plot. It’s a fantastic premise for a short, but Elevator is a 72-minute film and so, like Amityville Frankenstein, the result is a bloated, extravagant runtime for what is little more than a bare bones film.
Like Box’s two previous entries, Amityville Elevator actually debuted under the title Elevator to Insanity back in 2018. Rebranded under the Amityville moniker, the logline purports to “spoof” two recent horror trends: Elevated horror (get it?) and Amityville films.
The film has a bare bones premise: an unnamed Greek photographer (Gus Capucci) enters a non-descript elevator for a never-ending ride. Long minutes pass before the elevator pauses, admitting a woman (Bryonny) who gets off shortly afterwards. This sequence of events repeats at regular intervals, with the time between the woman’s arrival and departure slowly decreasing as the film progresses.
Initially the photographer pays no mind to the ridiculously lengthy journey, but in time he tries to question his fellow rider, who either ignores him or doesn’t respond. In time he also sees a woman practicing ballet on one of the floors who, in the film’s best sequence, slowly approaches the elevator, getting closer floor by floor.
At one point, the photographer is also attacked by a woman who screams at him – this goes on for nearly six consecutive minutes.
The photographer does ultimately try to exit the elevator, though it takes nearly thirty minutes for his first attempt. In the film’s most intriguing moment, when our protagonist peers into the darkness beyond the elevator doors, he’s dazzled by a slow moving light as the lift’s distorted electronic voice offers vague self-help platitudes such as “Embrace the familiar,” “You made this choice,” “Achieve your purpose,” and “Believe in yourself.”
The fact that the film ends with the photographer finally exiting the elevator in order to take pictures of four unmoving bodies posed on tables suggests the character is trapped in some kind of punitive purgatory due to his craft.
Maybe? The truth is that it’s not entirely clear.
With virtually no dialogue, no character development, and nearly sixty minutes of repetitive, identical imagery, Amityville Elevator doesn’t offer a lot to work with. And yet, if we return to the logline that this is somehow a “spoof,” a different take on the film is possible.
To be clear: calling this a spoof is an incredibly generous read, but by the end of the film, it’s not much of a stretch to read Amityville Elevator as a pointed jab at the entirety of the “franchise.”
Too many of these films are hollow, thinly-plotted cash-grabs that weaponize the brand recognition of Amityville by pairing it with a buzzy, saleable conceit (werewolf, witch, clown, etc). And while several entries have played fair with audience expectations and actually, you know, made a film – more than a few creatives have simply turned on the camera, filmed an hour’s worth of content, slapped the word “Amityville” on it, and sold it to Tubi.
Not unlike Ghosts of Amityville, Amityville Elevator would have made a decent short. There’s a solid high-concept premise here: man trapped in a never-ending elevator ride is forced to confront his (maybe literal) demons. But there’s absolutely no reason for the film to be longer than fifteen minutes. Seeing the photographer literally stand in the same spot and fail to engage another passenger for 40+ minutes isn’t entertainment; it’s torture.
A short with tighter editing could have encouraged audiences to become eagle-eyed sleuths looking for slight deviations in the repetitious action. By the time he finally exits the elevator at minute 53, however, it’s not just the photographer who is stuck on this interminable ride; it’s the audience.
And that may just be the point! There’s absolutely no way to recommend this experience, which practically begs to be skipped through in parts or played at high speed like pornography. But in hindsight, the ennui of revisiting the same tired experience, albeit with surface-level tweaks, is an incredibly astute encapsulation of what the Amityville “franchise” has become.
These films are now an endless, repetitive slog of sameness, broken up by intermittent screaming and monotone reminders to “accept your fate.” In this way, Amityville Elevator is an allegory for what the “franchise” has become.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Cute Ending: At film’s end, the photographer is replaced by a different male photographer, which plays into the idea that the “franchise” is simply being remade over and over again with different people.
- Language Subtitling: The only reason we know the photographer is Greek is because the subtitles read “Yelling in Greek.” It’s an odd creative choice that doesn’t advance the character or the narrative, though. It could be argued that this contributes to the language barrier between the photographer and his fellow passenger, but the woman only ever appears disinterested. Of course, we don’t know because she never speaks; his is the only dialogue in the film, apart from the elevator.
- Carnival of Curiousity: The dancing woman that occupies the photographer’s attention for a few floors is the closest Box comes to a creepy sequence. This passage coincidentally also occupies the shortest runtime (approximately 2.5 minutes), which means it’s brief enough for the repetition to sneak in without being overdone. It’s clear that Box has some intriguing ideas, but he needs to tighten his films up and stop padding the runtime.
- 10 to go: We’re nearing the end! As of this publication of this editorial, there are ten Amityville films released (though at least two others are in production or set to be released before the end of the year).
Next time: we’re swapping out Nick Box for action director Louis DeStefano’s take on the material with Amityville Emmanuelle (2023).