Tonight I had to pick something to watch with a short run-time because I had a prior football obligation. In fact, the poor Vikings probably felt more dread and despair tonight than any horror movie could generate in a soul-crushing 10-42 loss. GO PACKERS!

I decided to pick from a few documentaries on my queue and The Real Story: Amityville Horror happened to have the shortest length. This has been the third or fourth docu-style production I have taken in, not including some of the fictional movies, so I had a feeling it wouldn’t bring anything new to the table. I was mostly right, apart from an interview of the next door neighbors kid that grew up around the DeFeo family before the incident.

Most of you have heard about the franchise of The Amityville Horror at some point or other. If you are unfamiliar, it is a story of blood, “allegedly”s, and skepticism. It all started one night when Ronald DeFeo, a crazy,drug-dabbling kid, grabbed his dad’s shotgun and blew his six family members away. He was arrested the next day and confessed to the murders, swearing that voices in his head told him to do it.

Not long after a new family, the Lutz’s, moved into the house. Over a span of 28 days they claimed to have experienced some freeky-deeky shit go down. Poltergeist thumps and bumps. Waking up every night at the same time as when the DeFeo murders happened. Mysterious goo dripping from the walls. Finally, it became too much for them and they split, leaving all of their possessions (GET IT!?) behind. They went on to collaborate with Hollywood writer Jay Anson to make a book based on their terrors and the whole thing blew up. The Amityville Horror came out in theaters and became a sensation. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that this all happened a long time ago in the seventies. The fact that they are still making documentaries about the whole line of events to this day speaks volumes about the giant impact it had on America for generations.

The Real Story: Amityville Horror sets out to question the credibility of the wild claims the Lutz’s made. It shows both sides of the story by interviewing many people who were around for the media madness. I appreciated the unbiased take on the whole era. However, I hate to say that it still didn’t let me in on too much new information about the case. As I previously stated, the POV of the neighbor kid was the only new and interesting thing to me. I would recommend this to anyone who hasn’t seen or heard much about the Amityville events, but not to someone like me who has already done his research into Amityville.

★★★☆☆
3 “allegedly”s out of 5