''The Amityville Asylum'' (also known as ''The Nesting 2: Amityville Asylum'') is a 2013 British
horror film
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...
written and directed by
Andrew Jones. It is the eleventh film to be inspired by
Jay Anson
''The Amityville Horror'' is a book by American author Jay Anson, published in September 1977. It is also the basis of a series of films released from 1979 onward. The book is based on the claims of paranormal experiences by the Lutz family, b ...
's 1977 novel ''
The Amityville Horror
''The Amityville Horror'' is a book by American author Jay Anson, published in September 1977. It is also the basis of a series of films released from 1979 onward. The book is based on the claims of paranormal experiences by the Lutz family, b ...
''. Sophia Del Pizzo stars as Lisa Templeton, a young woman who is hired to work as a custodian at High Hopes
Psychiatric Hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociative ...
, an asylum that was built on the site of a haunted house in
Amityville, New York
Amityville () is a Political subdivisions of New York State#Village, village near the Babylon (town), New York, Town of Babylon in Suffolk County, New York, Suffolk County, on the South Shore (Long Island), South Shore of Long Island, in New Yo ...
.
Plot
In 1974, a cloaked figure gives
Ronald DeFeo Jr.
Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. (September 26, 1951 – March 12, 2021) was an American mass murderer who was tried and convicted for the 1974 killings of his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters in Amityville, Long Island, New York. Conde ...
a shotgun, which DeFeo uses to kill all six of his relatives at
112 Ocean Avenue in
Amityville, New York
Amityville () is a Political subdivisions of New York State#Village, village near the Babylon (town), New York, Town of Babylon in Suffolk County, New York, Suffolk County, on the South Shore (Long Island), South Shore of Long Island, in New Yo ...
. Decades later, the house is torn down and replaced by the High Hopes Psychiatric Hospital, which has just hired a new custodian named Lisa Templeton. Lisa is given a tour of the hospital by the maintenance man, Delaney, and told that she will be responsible for cleaning Ward X, a wing which houses criminally insane murderers like the sexual sadist Jerry Kimble, cannibalistic vigilante Dennis Palmer, occultist Sadie Krenwinkel, and a "
Patient X" who is implied to be DeFeo. On her first night working at the hospital, Lisa encounters the ghost of Allison DeFeo, is reprimanded for reporting this to the incredulous head of security, Hardcastle, and is sexually harassed by an orderly named Pemberton.
Palmer escapes from his cell one night and kills Pemberton before cannibalizing Kimble. He is subsequently tortured with electroshock equipment by Pemberton's fellow orderlies, and when Lisa witnesses this, she is browbeaten into silence by Hardcastle. Lisa researches the history of Amityville and discovers that, back in the 18th century, the Satchem, a Native American cult, settled in the area after being run out of Salem by Christians. The Satchem believed that making annual sacrifices of six people would result in them being gifted with immortality by a God called the Dark Master. The Satchem were eventually wiped out by a witch hunter named John Underhill and buried in a mass grave on the site of what would later become 112 Ocean Avenue. Krenwinkel is a member of a modern-day cult that has adopted the beliefs of the Satchem.
Lisa learns that Doctor Elliot Mixter, the owner of High Hopes, testified at Krenwinkel's trial; when she brings Mixter evidence that Krenwinkel has somehow acquired occult paraphernalia and access to the Internet, he is revealed to be in league with Krenwinkel, and has Lisa unlawfully committed to Ward X. Lisa is broken out of her cell by Delaney while Mixter arms Patient X with a shotgun and sends him on a rampage through High Hopes. Patient X murders Krenwinkel, Palmer, and Hardcastle before going after Lisa and Delaney, who encounter possessed patients (one of whom rips his own face off) and Allison's ghost while trying to flee High Hopes. After Patient X kills Delaney, he is killed by Lisa. Lisa confronts Mixter, who taunts her into attacking him, which results in Lisa being gunned down by the NYPD. The massacre at High Hopes is blamed on Lisa.
A year later, Mixter gives a television interview, during which he cheekily implies that he is now immortal while promoting his book, ''High Hopes, Broken Dreams.''
Cast
Release
The film had a limited theatrical run, and was released on DVD and video on demand, by 4Digital Media in the United Kingdom in 2013. The following year the film was released on DVD and video on demand in North America by
Hannover House
Hannover House is an American entertainment media distributor, specializing in the manufacture and release of pre-recorded movies and programs onto DVD and Blu-ray Disc, Blu-ray video devices, and the publication of literary and non-fiction books ...
.
Reception
John Marrone of
Bloody Disgusting
Bloody Disgusting is an American multi-media company, which began as a horror genre-focused news site/website specializing in information services that covered various horror medias, including: film, television, video games, comics, and music. ...
found ''The Amityville Asylum'' to be mediocre at best, offering mild praise to its performances while noting that its violence was anemic and its story was weak, and that all in all it felt like it was "pasted together on the fly with novice experimentation." Horror News was similarly critical of the film, giving it a score of 1/5 while calling it an "under-cooked mess" with "a boring first and second act with a third act that promises far more than it delivers." While Ed Blackadder of ''INFLUX Magazine'' was critical of the film's direction and writing and gave it a D grade, he conceded that it was still "somewhat watchable" and "better than most of the micro-budget schlock I sit through."
Tex Hula ranked ''The Amityville Asylum'' as the fifth best of the twenty-one ''Amityville'' films that he reviewed for
Ain't It Cool News
Ain't It Cool News (AICN) is an entertainment news website founded by Harry Knowles and run by his sister Dannie Knowles since September 2017, dedicated to news, rumors, and reviews of upcoming and current films, television, and comic book proje ...
, and concluded his coverage of it by writing, "Yeah, I kind of liked this one. It was a surprise. It has more effort and ambition than most of the sequels. It has a ballsy ending that I really liked."
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Amityville Asylum, The
2013 films
2013 horror films
2013 independent films
2010s British films
2010s English-language films
2010s exploitation films
2010s ghost films
2010s psychological horror films
2010s serial killer films
2010s supernatural horror films
Amityville Horror films
British exploitation films
British ghost films
British independent films
British mystery films
British psychological horror films
British sequel films
British serial killer films
British supernatural horror films
English-language Welsh films
Fiction about familicide
Films about cannibalism
Films about cults
Films about grieving
Films about human sacrifice
Films about immortality
Films about mass murder
Films about self-harm
Films about sexual harassment
Films about witchcraft
Films directed by Andrew Jones
Films set in 1974
Films set in 2013
Films set in 2014
Films set in Long Island
Films set in psychiatric hospitals
Films shot in Swansea
Films shot in Wales
Horror films based on actual events
Murder mystery films
British mystery horror films
Torture in films
Unofficial sequel films
Welsh films
Films about witch hunting
Works about janitors
2010s mystery horror films