Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
A gory lark, a cheap-thrill-packed love poem to the history of the contemporary horror film.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Low-key creepy rather than outright scary, the new Amityville marks a modest improvement over the original.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Completely cheesy and mildly enjoyable.

Name : Jack Mathews / Alias : New York Daily News
A cut-to-order MTV hack attack. Audiences will be stunned not because they have been frightened but by how obvious and safe the whole thing is.

Name : Ruthe Stein / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It retains the cheesy look of the 1979 original, pure schlock not gussied up to appear to be anything else.

Name : Bob Longino / Alias : Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There's nothing this Amityville won't beg, borrow, steal from or fabricate in trying to make your neck hairs sit up and quiver.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
This house springs so many FX shocks it plays like a theme-park ride. Result? It's not scary, just busy.

Name : Rick Groen / Alias : Globe and Mail
A sustained if wildly unco-ordinated assault on our senses (our emotions are clearly not on his battle map), complementing those feverish jump cuts with a cliche of equally stunning proportions.

Name : Kevin Thomas / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The film is a terrific scare show, fast and furious, made with a lot of style and energy, packing plenty of jolts yet never lingering morbidly over horrific images.

Name : Bill Muller / Alias : Arizona Republic
If star Ryan Reynolds wants to scare us, why not just lock us in a room and make us watch Van Wilder over and over? Or have girlfriend Alanis Morissette talk about her past relationships?

Name : Bruce Westbrook / Alias : Houston Chronicle
Like good drive-in fare from the '70s, this is all about sensation.

Name : David Hiltbrand / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Despite Andrew Douglas' tightly focused direction, this is a cheap, calculated scare.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Salon.com
I wasn't shocked by The Amityville Horror, or outraged by it: I felt nothing but disdain.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
A few lines get laughs, but the horror is standard fare, without a shred of innovation.

Name : Gene Seymour / Alias : Newsday
The movie is a procession of unregenerate B-level goosing. But there's definitely a smirk beneath the muck.

Name : Kirk Honeycutt / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Shorter and punchier but nearly as hokey as the original.

Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Nothing gets in the way of the rote staging, the ham-handed predictability, the feeling that you've been to this house, and yawned at these ghosts, once too often.

Name : Connie Ogle / Alias : Miami Herald
Moviegoers are more cynical now than they were in 1979, and most will laugh off the moments meant to be tense. You can't really blame them.

Name : Lisa Rose / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
The startling thing about the remake is that it's one of the better horror films to hit screens in recent months, thanks to its refusal to take itself too seriously.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
If they scare up enough business to perpetuate this sort of retread, that will be the real horror.

Name : Chuck Wilson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Never buy a house with a basement, and while you're at it, avoid old Dutch Colonials in which the previous occupants were murdered by an eldest son possessed by demons.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
In this Amityville, the performances are bad, the special effects ho-hum, and it's not even particularly scary.

Name : Roger Moore / Alias : Orlando Sentinel
The original is still creepy, but this Horror will have fans jumping in their seats and talking back to the screen.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
Since Scream poured irony into the mix, it has become mighty hard to write a line of dialogue that doesn't elicit winks and nods. We all know where the mayhem's leading.

Name : Philip Wuntch / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Watching The Amityville Horror is about as enjoyable as attending a Halloween party hosted by people you can barely tolerate.

Name : Sean Daly / Alias : Washington Post
You'll want to get out of Amityville long before the Lutzes do.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Shoddily made, boring and, most shockingly, without a single decent scare.

Name : Robert Denerstein / Alias : Denver Rocky Mountain News
The filmmakers have managed to take a mediocre movie and make it worse.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Brevity is the single best thing about it.

Name : John Monaghan / Alias : Detroit Free Press
The latest in a long line of cheap horror film remakes that combine familiar names and stories with slash-cut editing and computer-generated effects.

Name : David Ng / Alias : Village Voice
The Amityville Horror is a Xerox so tattered and faded that it's impossible to determine who's to blame for the overproduced mediocrity before our eyes.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
Begins slavishly faithful to its low-key 1970s predecessor then sledgehammers auds with a numbing succession of shock edits and over-the-top horror effects.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
In a ghost story, the narrative doesn't have to be a model of originality or coherence, but it needs to support the scares. In The Amityville Horror, the writing is so bad that it detracts from the 'boo!' moments and creepy interludes.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Boston Globe
Not content to remake an old, mediocre horror movie, this Amityville takes its cues from current mediocre horror movies, too. This one is frightening only if you can't remember the last throwaway movie that leaned on all the same tricks.

Name : Roger Ebert / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The problem with The Amityville Horror is that, in a very real sense, there's nothing there.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
In theory, this should all be scary, but it just isn't. You giggle at the B-movie cheesiness of it.