t's back!
The Amityville Horror, about a creepy house that haunted the nightmares of a generation, has been reborn in a gritty, computer-enhanced supernatural thrillfest, the latest in a series of updates and remakes of classic horror films, many from actionmeister Michael Bay, who produced.
But the new Amityville purports to go back to the source of the story, Jay Anson's book about the supposed true story of the Lutz family, and not the pokey 1979 movie that starred James Brolin and Margot Kidder.
The new Amityville, set in 1974, stars Ryan Reynolds (Blade: Trinity) and Melissa George (TV's Alias) as George and Kathy Lutz, who think they've found the deal of a lifetime in the form of a rambling Dutch colonial house on a river in Amityville, Long Island. They move in with their three children. But as George begins to undergo a disquieting change, Kathy learns that the previous owners died at the hands of one of their own. The film looks at the 28 days it took the Lutzes to flee the house, leaving all their belongings behind.
George, Reynolds and director Andrew Douglas took a moment to speak with Science Fiction Weekly and other reporters about The Amityville Horror, which opens April 15.
Melissa George, we heard that the real Kathy Lutz actually passed away while you were filming.
George: She died the first week of filming. We got a call. ... She wasn't well. She had a breathing problem. And I never got to meet her, and then we were filming, and we get an announcement saying Kathy Lutz just passed away. She was 50-something. Very young. We didn't expect it. It was a little scary that she chose our movie to [die], the time of filming. It was a little weird. There were a lot of weird things that happened on that movie, actually.
What else happened that was odd?
George: We were filming, ... and we were at the boathouse, and the police came by. ... They were on the water there, and they said they found a dead body that had just floated to the surface. We were like, "Awesome!" We were like, "That's making everything much more comfortable in this movie."
How reluctant were you to take this on?
George: The beauty about it is they called me and said, "We have a movie called Amityville Horror," and I said, "OK." And they said, "Can you read it?" And I was in New York, so I read it, and this is a really good script. Great story. Great heroine, good woman, strong. Lots of good acting scenes. Not just a horror film where you're getting slashed apart and you're running through the forest and your clothes are falling off or whatever. I liked that there was a real story to it. And then they said, "It's actually a remake." And I said, "Really?" And they said, "Yeah, it's a 1970s film." I said, "I didn't know that." Because I didn't. ... I was born later in the '70s, so I ... had no idea. But that was beautiful, that I didn't know those things. And I also hadn't seen the film when I auditioned.
Could you easily tap into the heroic aspects of this?
George: Yeah. A lot of characters I like to play are strong women. On Alias I assassinated them, but that's another extreme of being a strong woman. And this was ... a difficult role, because I felt I was the audience seeing the movie. Like, witnessing what Ryan's character was going through. I felt like I was responsible what the audience is going to feel when they watch our movie. Like, how does Kathy Lutz behave? That's how we're going to kind of feel as well.
Did you know Ryan Reynolds before you started shooting?
George: No. And you know the scenes where I'm watching all the footage for the first time in the library, crying? Day one of filming. ... Ryan hadn't even arrived to shoot the movie yet. So here I am bawling my eyes out, looking at all this footage, and he turned up on set, and that was the first time I met him. It's great that they didn't make us screen test together. Because we were both characters that, we just gelled. I mean, it was just perfect. ... I don't sort of work with actors that I don't really get along with. If you hate them, you just find something nice about them and focus on that only. That's all you do. ... But Ryan was a gem. Made me laugh.
Do you have a favorite scene in the movie?
George: Gosh. There're so many. It's hard to say your favorite was the strangling scene. ... But Michael Bay [was] actually shooting ... the reshoots with the ax here [points to stomach], and it was great to see Bay in the rain, and, I'm just like, getting that ax ... I don't know how many times.
There's also the scene where you have to climb on the roof of the house and rescue your 8-year-old daughter, played by Chloe Grace Moretz. Did you have to do that yourself?
George: All myself. That was freaky. I didn't like that too much. Because little Chloe, you know the scene where she falls off the edge? All for real, you guys. No green screen. All that walking [along the roof's ridgeline] is for real. She had a crane with two pieces of skinny wire that was above her head, and she was balancing by herself with two pieces, and then they just rubbed out the wire.
Did you have a wire on?
George: First, they took me and they dropped me off on top of the roof. I'm like, "Thanks very much." And I'm leaning over, and they put a tiny wire around my waist hooked to the side. You can't believe how horrible, looking at everyone [as if] they were like ants. They were so small. You were up so high. And little Chloe had to have, like, a harness [on] and hang over the edge, and then the crane would go around and shoot these great, gorgeous, romantic shots. And [between takes] she was pretending that she was hung, as a joke, and I'm like, "That's so not funny, little girl. You're adorable and everything, but what you're doing right now. ... " She was dangling off the edge, 80 feet above the ground, not scared at all, and I'm looking at this kid like, with her eyes rolled back in her head [shudders].
Do you have any opinion about the reality of this story? Do you believe it?
George: I do believe that maybe something happened if they didn't come back for [any of their stuff]. I believe that something went on. I don't know how much is made up and how much isn't, but it makes for a good story.
Did you ever want to go to the actual Amityville house?
George: You know, I was going to. The way they made this house was so perfect that it freaked me out enough that I wasn't about to get on a plane and go see that house. It was enough for me.
You used to be a champion roller skater?
George: Yes. That gets you far in this town, let me tell you [laughs]. Being a champion roller skater. I'm like, "Why wasn't I a champion at something else? It would be much more helpful." ... I was an artistic champion, where you do triples and spins and stuff like that, and I came in second in the world.
Ryan Reynolds, you got pretty pumped up for Blade: Trinity, and in Amityville, George Lutz is also pretty buff. Are you still working out?
Reynolds: Uh, no, ... not to the level I was on Blade and Amityville. ... I was actually wearing a blue unitard. It was CGI. ... No, it was from Blade. It was carryover from my last movie, and I just kind of kept it for this, because I liked the thought of George Lutz being a really sort of physically imposing guy. So I really didn't have to work as hard as I did the previous year for it, because that's where I had to gain all the weight.
Why were you interested in this, a horror movie?
Reynolds: I loved that ... the movie had all these supernatural elements to it, but I loved the fact that I didn't have to worry about that. The director could shoot the horror film, and I could shoot basically a movie about this guy who's unraveling, psychologically speaking. I mean, he's ... going from point A to point Z, just losing his mind throughout the course of this film. ... It just was so different, and I really loved that, the notion of rage with this guy. He had this ability to burst and explode and not really know when it's going to happen, and I just wanted to play that.
You had to go to some pretty dark places in this film. During the course of production, you kept yourself apart from the kids to maintain an emotional distance, and in one take, you spontaneously slapped one of the kids as part of the scene.
Reynolds: Oh, yeah, Billy, [played by] Jesse James. He had it coming [laughs]. No, no, it was just actually horrible. I didn't mean to do it. ... That's what I mean. Things are unpredictable, and you don't know what's going to happen. It wasn't hard or anything. But enough to, you know, he looked up like he just won the lottery. I mean, it was just so cool to him. I look over, and the script supervisor is crying. And I'm trying to apologize to her, and I don't know what's happening. ... But it was great. It was one of those great moments. In a perverse way I was sort of excited by the fact that something happened on film that was just totally unplanned, and it just came out and organically enough, and not so organically that it actually hurt anyone. So everyone walked away from it, but it was definitely disturbing.
You also made a conscious choice not to talk to the children between takes.
Reynolds: No, I mean, ... I don't want to get attached to the kids. I don't want to get to know them and love them. I want to stay as far away from them as possible. It helps me do my job better.
How did they react to that? Do they understand why you were doing that?
Reynolds: They're little adults, though. ... I mean, they're talking about back-end gross on a movie. So you're just like, "Wow." ... I think that they were fine. The process, they respect it. Yeah, I mean, one of them is my financial advisor now, the little one. But you know, they're so on it. ... They gave me my space, ... and their parents are obviously very hands-on and that sort of thing, so they were fine with it.
How familiar were you with the original movie?
Reynolds: Well, I had seen it. ... I thought that for its day it certainly, I'm sure, it was very provocative, and [the real event] was fresh in the minds of all these people, these murders that took place. I don't think it aged well. I don't think it stood the test of time. I felt like it was by all means a perfectly worthy remake. ... It was a story that was definitely worth retelling. ... All due respect to the people who were a part of it, I just don't think it ... stood the test of time at all.
Do you have any beliefs in the supernatural?
Reynolds: I believe in dark energies, and I think any time you enter a house where something that tragic happened, I'm imagining you're going to experience something dark. And I know that this family did. What actually happened, the details of which are not for me to decide, but they certainly were there only 28 days and got the hell out of there for some good reason, I believe. ... But ... my opinions aren't formed enough on it to really comment.
Melissa said that some bad stuff happened during the production. She said a body floated up in the lake ...
Reynolds: It was my fault. ... "Don't throw the ax" is what they said. I was juggling them, and then, you know ...
Yes, ... that was something that was awful that happened. I know nothing about it, and we certainly didn't treat the situation cavalierly. But ... this was a densely populated lake area as well. It wasn't like a secluded pond and this f--kin' Mafia member floated up or something. A legitimate accident, I think. But no, I didn't experience anything horrifically supernatural on the movie or anything. I know it sells a lot of tickets to say I did, but really, I didn't. It wasn't something I experienced. Again, like I was never in tune with that whole shooting. For me it was all about the psychology of George.
You don't shoot this in order, but we get to watch you deteriorate from the guy who's playing with the kid in the bed to this guy at the end.
Reynolds: Yeah. It was fun to do. ... My hotel room is like a gigantic diagram of George. ... I had cards all over the place. ... I used, actually, an alphabetical system, A to Z. ... "Where am I today?" So scene 118 falls in the letter Y to X. ... [It was] that literal.
They also made you wear contact lenses to turn your eyes red at various points in the film.
Reynolds: Well, we had a couple different contacts. But we couldn't always get them in. They're literally like transparent dinner plates. They were the biggest things I'd ever seen. It was like a crowbar to get them in. So by the end, ... we used these menthol crystals, and I would actually in some scenes just rub them into my eyes.
Did you meet the real George Lutz?
Reynolds: It wasn't a biography, so it wasn't on the top of my list. And I guess the most diplomatic way I could say it is that I don't think MGM is overly excited about me meeting him. So I don't know what that means, and I didn't even ask. So I just, said, "All right. That's fine. I don't need to meet George."
Andrew Douglas, when directing this remake, did you look at other films for inspiration?
Douglas: When I was trying to immerse myself in a lot of films to see where this film would go, I found that I looked to two things mainly. I looked to The Shining once, hard. Not as a spectator anymore, but as a storyteller. I looked at a lot of Wes Craven's films, because he's such a master of the mechanics of suspense. You know, timing. And then I looked at a lot of Japanese, Chinese and Korean horror films, because I felt that I was really interested in trying to find ways of making newer scares. Not least because there are so many horror films around, and I just didn't want to tap into the same imagery that all horror films are tapping into, even though I'm probably guilty of doing that.
What about the original film? Was that any influence at all?
Douglas: No. I deliberately didn't look at it again. I saw it as a kid, as a spectator. I can remember it pretty well. The main thing I remember are the braces on the babysitter. So we changed braces to ... breasts. [laughter]
What are the challenges of doing this movie and making this movie contemporary, for a contemporary audience?
Douglas: It was a big creative decision to [set this in the 1970s]. This could easily have been a more contemporary film. We could have saved money and time by not having period cars and period telephones. I mean, it is a little bit anachronistic. It's a definite hybrid film. ... Men certainly weren't built like Ryan. ... So it's kind of a hybrid. Its not a pure '70s film. But I think the inherited wisdom was that in some way the original film has so much equity, a kind of familiarity that ... we wanted to somehow tap into that for commercial reasons, but also tap into the idea of it being a true story, that at some level we wanted to be able to say "Based on a true story." Because that has so much value in a horror film. And you know, then it's clearly elaborated on and bent and twisted and speculated, but there really were those grotesque murders, and there really was a scandal one year later when the place was considered haunted and the Lutz family left.
You shot young Chloe Moretz actually walking on the roof.
Douglas: I was petrified. Absolutely petrified. ... Nobody in the crew could walk that line. And the child got up there for 20 minutes. ... She was on wires. But it's still so high. After 20 minutes she was completely comfortable. It's astonishing.
Did you worry about having a John Landis moment [Landis was one of the directors of the ill-fated 1983 Twilight Zone film, in which a stunt went wrong, resulting in the deaths of actor Vic Morrow and two children.]
Douglas: Absolutely. ... I could barely sleep.
In other scenes, child actor Isabel Conner plays the ghost of Jodie Defeo in scary makeup. How did you keep the kids from getting scared themselves?
Douglas: You know, it's funny. I think they have a far greater sense of what's real and what's playful than we do. I think we hit a certain age where we start to confuse reality. ... For kids in general up to certain age, there's clearly playtime, horror, and real time. ... Isabel, it tickled her pink to come out and have lunch with full makeup on, and it tickled the other kids, because that's play. And of course none of the children are seeing the whole film or the context of the whole film, so you're not creating full, rounded nightmares in front of them.
There are always stories of bad things happening during the production of films like this. Was that true on this film?
Douglas: Yeah, that's true. And to this day I don't know if that was practical jokers. Obviously everybody who's working on it is in the kind of zone, and the house: ... if you did nights and left at 4 o'clock in the morning, if you're the last one out, it's a dark house.
What sort of stuff happened?
Douglas: Just stuff like lights going on. People would lose equipment. I mean, lights in the whole house. Not just an occasional light. ... The light bulbs would be screwed out a half turn by the morning. Just strange things like that.
The house really is the key to the success or failure of this movie. How do you create that house and make it as chilling and realistic as possible?
Douglas: I think you do a really simple thing, which is you give it a face, actually. I mean, there was a point in the whole scouting [and] designing preparation process where some people wanted it to be just a full-on haunted Victorian house. And I'm tearing my hair out going, "No! No! It's got to have a damn face. It can't just have pointy bits, like [in] Van Helsing." It's got to have a face, because this is what we respond to. ... I remember the poster for [the first] Amityville more than I remember the film. And the poster had, you know, eyes, and the balcony was teeth. And it's a Halloween mask. And there's something, that's so deep, that imagery.
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