The House Always Wins: A Definitive Ranking of AMITYVILLE Movies
Have you ever thought “Wow, there are a lot of Amityville movies! I wonder if any are worth watching?” Well, I watched them all so you don’t have to.
A completist from way back, I refuse to let a single one go unwatched. Official Amityvilles, weird sequels that barely have anything to do with the original, movies that got renamed to something else but were originally Amityville movies, movies that are only Amityville movies outside of the States, and short films are all included in this list. I’ve watched every documentary I could get my hands on, but decided not to list them here—this is a fictional film-only list.
Before I get into it, I’ll go over some of the usual questions I get:
Yes, there are 52 current Amityville movies.
Yes, I even watched that one.
Actually, most of them are pretty fun, it wasn’t really torture.
No, I am not mentally stable.
Good? Let’s dive in!
1. The Amityville Horror (1979)
This was obviously going to be number one. Despite not feeling terribly spooky to me anymore, it’s definitely the scariest of all of them; anyone who watched it as a kid had nightmares afterward. It follows the plot of the original Jay Anson book and, sure, we all know it’s a hoax, but it’s a good time. On top of that, the casting is superb - Margot Kidder, James Brolin, and Murray Hamilton who you probably recognize as the Mayor of a different kind of Amity in JAWS.
2. Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (1992)
While I acknowledge that the original is the best, this is my personal favorite. I’m obsessed with the house these people live in, the haunted clock itself, everyone’s wardrobes, the fact that a teenage boy is inexplicably friends with an old psychic woman, and the way it plays with time. If this list convinces you to watch any of these, I beg that it’s this one.
3. Amityville II: The Possession (1982)
The first sequel really ramps up the supernatural weirdness in the house with the first half being about the haunting and the second about possession. This one is a sort of prequel where they rename the DeFeo family to Montelli, but you can tell by the events of the film it was meant to be them. While I’d argue that about 80% of this movie is better than the original, this is the first of entirely too many Amityville movies to include a weird incest plotline, so I just can’t move it up in my ranking.
4. Amityville: The Evil Escapes (1989)
AMITYVILLE: THE EVIL ESCAPES is another of the run of haunted object movies where something from the original Amityville house has been moved to a new location to wreak havoc and in this one, it’s the ugliest lamp ever made. I want it so bad. Even though it’s a made for TV movie, the scares are pretty decent and it stars Patty Duke, of all people, giving it her all when the movie doesn’t really call for it.
5. Amityville: Dollhouse (1996)
This is the last of the ‘80s/’90s sequels that have that daydream-y, 'I rented this from my friend's brother that recommended NIGHT OF THE COMET when I was ten' sort of quality to them and the last of the original run of haunted objects movies, both of which ended when nearly a decade later the remake was released. This one involves a dollhouse sowing chaos for a family with some good effects, some bad effects, neat makeup, giant rats, and a wonky ending.
6. Amityville 3-D (1983)
AMITYVILLE 3-D boasts my favorite excuse to have new people in the famously haunted house. No sane person would buy it at this point, right? The easy solve is a skeptical journalist who buys it to prove the haunting is a hoax. Of course, he’s wrong, but at least we get to see the hijinks that ensue.
7. Witches of Amityville (2020)
A woman that runs a witch academy in Amityville kills her students and bathes in their blood like Countess Báthory while three rival witches try to stop her from doing harm. All of them are hot. There are sacrifices, the witches shoot lightning out of their hands, they raise a demon! Is this a good movie? Probably not, but it’s fun and sexy, so I love it.
8. Amityville: The Awakening (2017)
A high budget sequel released in 2017 that everyone promptly forgot about after release, AMITYVILLE: THE AWAKENING is actually pretty good. Real actors, good film quality, a decent premise, and some good scares. The problem is the good scares are few and far between. It’s possible that the PG-13 rating had something to do with it, but there are plenty of serviceable horror films boasting the same. Either way, it’s a good watch and I really relate to the teenage boy who just carries around a copy of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (1979) in his backpack, locked and loaded, ready to hand to Bella Thorne in the middle of the school day.
9. Against the Night (2017)
Despite shedding its original title of AMITYVILLE PRISON, if you’re watching these in chronological order, this will be exactly the reprieve you need. It has nothing to do with Amityville, but neither do a lot of the sequels, so it’s fine. I think the main reason they changed the title is they ended up with a bigger budget and better acting than they thought they’d have.
The premise of college-aged teenagers breaking into an abandoned prison to go ghost hunting isn’t anything special, but between the way it plays out, the way it’s shot, and the wild ending, it’s worth watching.
10. Amityville in Space (2020)
The end of Mark Polonia’s Father Benna trilogy (the first of which you can find further down the list while the second isn’t an Amityville movie at all) features Father Benna heading to the Amityville house to finally exorcize the demon he’s been battling since the first film only for it to go horribly wrong and the house to be teleported not only into the year 3015, but into outer space. Joined by the crew of the Wyoming, Benna fights a few different forms of evil until it all comes to a head at the end of the movie.
Is it absolutely ridiculous? Yes. Is it totally awesome? Yes!
11. The Amityville Murders (2018)
The cast of this one is good, but John Robinson absolutely knocks it out of the park as Butch DeFeo. The film is mostly angry Italian-Americans screaming over one another, it’s a lot of family drama and that leads you to just sort of shrug when Ronald DeFeo dies because he’s portrayed as such an asshole. It makes for a compelling movie, but I don’t know what the man was like in real life and the almost justification of his death feels kind of gross to me.
12. Amityville Christmas Vacation (2022)
Just barely long enough to be considered a feature film, AMITYVILLE CHRISTMAS VACATION follows hero cop Wally Griswold as he wins a contest he didn’t enter to stay at a lovely little bed and breakfast in Amityville. It’s directed by, and stars, Steve Rudzinski who also directed CAROUSHELL and if you go into this knowing it’s going to be silly, you’re going to end up loving it. Between the best rendition of “O Christmas Tree” I’ve ever heard, the middle of the movie being the only tolerable romcom I’ve seen, and the greatest ending of any of these movies, it easily fought its way to the top half of the list.
13. The Amityville Terror (2016)
More of a teen drama for the majority of the runtime than a horror flick, THE AMITYVILLE TERROR has a higher budget than most and seemed to put that money into getting people who could act. Yet another new family moves into the house and we’re treated to good film quality, lighting, editing, and a little bad CGI, but it’s made forgivable by the presence of decent practical effects.
14. Amityville Uprising (2020)
It’s a little weird to make a movie set in Amityville that isn’t about the house or something from the house, but this actually works. An explosion puts chemicals in the air and then rain brings them back down, turning some of the townsfolk into zombies and melting others while the local cops try to keep order. The production value’s a little higher than others from the same time period, the acting is solid, and even though it’s not about Ocean Avenue, I love an original zombie flick.
15. Amityville: A New Generation (1993)
Another haunted object movie, this one sees a photographer bringing home a mirror gifted to him by a homeless person he took a picture of. The mirror essentially works like the camera from Say Cheese And Die in that whatever you see happen in it later happens in real life. It’s an interesting enough premise, but it doesn’t have the same vibe as the other early AMITYVILLEs because the haunting is happening to people and not their homes.
16. The Amityville Horror (2005)
As far as horror remakes go, this one’s not bad. The cast is pretty good, consisting of an unhinged Ryan Reynolds, a put-upon Melissa George, Rachel Nichols as the babysitter, and a young Chloë Grace Moretz. It’s essentially the same as the original movie, just updated and making the terrible decision to have George kill the family dog.
17. Amityville Island (2020)
A woman stops by a yard sale while moving into Amityville and buys everything. It’s not clear how much of the stuff is haunted as a result of coming from the Ocean Avenue house, but hey, all it takes is one. After killing her children and being sent to prison, she and another prisoner are sent by the warden to an island where human experimentation runs rampant.
It’s barely an Amityville movie, but it really earns its ranking by involving gunshot wounds that clearly don’t hurt, a possessed bear, and wombs being genetically enhanced to the sound of dubstep.
18. Amityville Vibrator (2020)
After a break-up, a woman and her best friend hit up a garage sale where she buys a possessed vibrator and the best friend, rightly, tells her how gross it is to buy a used sex toy. What follows is genuinely insane and while not exactly hardcore, is definitely past softcore, so make of that what you will. There is a scene toward the end of the movie that sees two characters wander off to a field to do shrooms together that goes on for way too long and though I’m sure they had a great time filming it, it’s not something I wanted to watch for that long. Aside from that there’s sex, satanic vibrators, ventriloquist dummy sex, wearing someone’s face as a mask, so it’s a fun time!
19. Amityville Toybox (2016)
Here I am to champion a Dustin Ferguson movie. Beat me up if you must. Most of the characters in this are garbage people that you can't wait to see bite it, but the acting is much better than previous installments, we're back to the fun, Warehouse 13-style cursed object gimmick, and the camera work doesn't make me want to cry which is more than I can say for some of the previous movies.
20. Amityville Outhouse (2022)
The best two Canadian dollars I’ve ever spent, AMITYVILLE OUTHOUSE is a 57-minute long anthology that was exactly what I needed after watching a particularly bad entry. It doesn’t take itself seriously - the definition of backyard trash cinema. Some might not find that charming, but it’s enough to earn its place on this list.
21. The Amityville Harvest (2020)
There’s a lot happening in THE AMITYVILLE HARVEST. A documentary crew goes to a fancy manor to research its history and its current owner is there to show them around and answer questions. This man is so obviously a vampire that it’s insane no one notices for so long. On top of that there are confederate ghost zombies that kill a man with a bayonet, a subplot about the assassination of Lincoln, and a guy in the basement that’s basically Dr. Satan. It’s almost too much but it keeps the pacing steady, so I’ll take it.
22. The Amityville Curse (1990)
A couple of house flippers buy a home and fix it up to sell it before finding out it’s haunted. It’s not the Amityville house, it’s just also in Amityville. The main characters are so horrible and grating that you wait the entire time for bad things to happen to them, but nothing really does. All the kills happen off screen and while there are some nice shots, it’s not worth much beyond nostalgia.
23. The Amityville Quilt Store (2022)
Clocking in at eight minutes, Aaron Bartuska made this short with Sam Raimi in mind and it shows. It’s got coloring that makes it genuinely look like someone’s ‘80s home video. Despite being a little spooky, the vibe is extremely comforting.
24. Amityville Death House (2015)
Written by John Oak Dalton and executive produced by Fred Olen Ray, DEATH HOUSE has a higher production quality than the standard Polonia fare. In this one, a group of college-aged kids head to Amityville to stay at one of the girls’ grandmother’s house. The grandmother is wasting away in her bed, in terrible need of moisturizer, and the kids find the diary of a witch and start reading it out loud because they’ve apparently never seen an EVIL DEAD movie.
There are definitely slower parts in the middle of everything where the Polonia regulars show up just to be killed off and Eric Roberts reads some tarot cards, but the ending features a woman turning into a spider, a girl with six breasts, and an explosion, so it earns its stars.
25. Amityville Gas Chamber (2020)
When I watched this for the first time, my best friend incredulously said “Is that an Amityville Holocaust movie?” and I’m really happy to say no. AMITYVILLE GAS CHAMBER is 83 minutes of Michael Stone from YouTube’s Rotted Reviews sitting in front of a green screen and silently reading a paperback copy of The Amityville Horror while the only sounds are the crackling of the "fire" in the background and the reader farting.
While Michael reads gassily, he tosses little pop-up video facts at the bottom of the screen with trivia about the franchise, other things, and a picture of a cat named Sylas. At one point one of the trivia bits claims “This is 100 times better than AMITYVILLE MT. MISERY ROAD”—and the man’s right.
26. Amityville Clownhouse (2017)
This late in the franchise, I wasn’t expecting any kind of real continuity, but this is a sequel to AMITYVILLE TOYBOX. It’s a fun enough movie, but the sound quality is atrocious - you go from not being able to hear a thing to being absolutely deafened in the blink of an eye and it repeats the whole movie. I’m not entirely sure what happened there considering this is the same team from both AMITYVILLE TOYBOX and AMITYVILLE IN THE HOOD, but it’s only bearable if you’re determined to make it through the whole movie for completion's sake.
27. Amityville Cop (2021)
Another barely tethered to Amityville movie, this one follows a bunch of cops sitting around the cop shop, bullshitting until they have some kind of office party, and the maniac cop shows up to do some murdering. His makeup looks really cool, but the plot is paper thin, the acting is phoned in, and I’m pretty sure the police station is an abandoned office building.
28. The Amityville Moon (2021)
I’m not sure why this wasn’t titled THE AMITYVILLE WEREWOLF, but it’s actually worth watching for the werewolf costume, the transformation scene, and getting to see Tuesday Knight.
29. The Amityville Exorcism (2017)
A man being read his last rites before his execution tasks the priest with saving others from suffering his fate by sending him to find the family whose home he used wood scraps from the Amityville house to do repairs. I’ve personally got a soft spot for this one since it’s the first of Mark Polonia’s Father Benna trilogy (NOAH’S SHARK and AMITYVILLE IN SPACE being the others) but can recognize that while it’s a fun Polonia joint, it’s not very Amityville.
30. The Amityville Cute Farting Cat (2022)
A one-minute long YouTube short starring a cat named Goo, this is 40 seconds of cuteness while fart noises play, a little bit of credits and title screen, and a one second long screamer. I’m not a big fan of spoiling the ending of things, but screamers just seem rude to me.
31. The Conjuring 2 (2016)
Okay, so this isn’t a bad movie by any means, but by the time I got around to it I was so deeply engrossed in the Amityville franchise that I was left severely disappointed. The opening four minutes are a séance during which they recreate the DeFeo murders and the next 130 is English people yelling.
32. Amityville Scarecrow 2 (2022)
Set a year after AMITYVILLE SCARECROW, the sequel sees the camp being reopened by the survivors. Better than its predecessor, this one’s more of a slasher flick than anything, which is fine by me considering the summer camp setting, masked killer, and annoying characters you can’t wait to see bite it.
33. The Unspoken (2015)
Titled THE ORIGIN OF THE AMITYVILLE TERROR in Spanish language territories, this isn’t a bad movie or anything. Jodelle Ferland’s great as always, it does a fine job of creating atmosphere, and the twist is genuinely insane, but it’s not much of an Amityville movie with about three seconds worth of a road sign that says “Amityville, 14 miles” and that's it.
34. The Dawn (2020)
Say what you will about the other Amityville movies, but at least most of them aren’t boring. THE AMITYVILLE DAWN is a very well made and well-acted movie and I’m sure it’s someone’s cup of tea, but it’s not mine. Most of the film is slow-paced, full of long conversations about religion, and has almost nothing to do with Amityville, but someone put a whole lot of effort into making it, so I truly hope you like it more than I did.
35. Sickle (2015)
SICKLE was retitled AMITYVILLE: THE FINAL CHAPTER and one must assume it’s because no one was interested in it without the franchise recognition. As such, it’s got nothing to do with Amityville. It’s about a young boy who’s accused of a murder he didn’t commit and his attempt to adjust after being freed from jail as the monster who actually did commit the crime returns. It’s a little silly and the acting isn't too bad, so it’s certainly not the worst of the bunch.
36. Prey (1977)
Truly the least connected to the franchise, PREY was retitled to TERROR IN AMITYVILLE PARK when released in Italy, so I felt it was worth including. Made before the original film, this is a strange sci-fi movie about an alien staying with a lesbian couple and them slowly becoming suspicious of their guest. The gore is great, the alien makeup looks amazing, and the tense atmosphere works wonders. If this wasn’t an Amityville-specific list, it’d be a lot higher.
37. Amityville Karen (2022)
When a woman named Karen steals a bottle of wine made in Amityville, she becomes cursed. The premise is fantastic and should be enough to carry an entire film, but the runtime is about 20-30 minutes longer than necessary and while the lead actress does a good job of selling it, casting Dawna Lee Heising and not utilizing her is a crime.
38. Amityville Cabin (2021)
Another short film, coming in at 14 minutes, it’s incapable of overstaying its welcome and, as a parody, it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
39. Amityville Vampire (2021)
Some cleaners (crime scene cleaners, maybe?) go into the Amityville house to take care of all the blood, but when some drips into one of their mouths, she becomes a vampire. Every single scene in this movie plays out like the beginning of a porn with the weird innuendos and “sexy” voice, but it drags on like that. It’s the movie equivalent of blue balls.
40. The Amityville Asylum (2013)
Around 50 minutes into this a character says "are you seriously telling me you've never heard of the Uhmiddyville horror house?" (this isn't some weird slip, she does it multiple times later). Shortly after this conversation, our main character gets on her computer to learn more about the house from what is clearly a Word document. It doesn’t get much better from there.
41. Amityville Poltergeist (2020)
A clear rip off of JU-ON and its ilk, AMITYVILLE POLTERGEIST uses the Japanese-style ghost woman with her off-kilter movements to pretty good effect; the camera work is also competent, but the acting leaves a lot to be desired. The biggest issue is a pretty common one: the poster featured a cool looking demon that never showed up in the movie.
42. Amityville in the Hood (2021)
AMITYVILLE IN THE HOOD is so upsetting. The idea that people are growing weed in the Amityville house and anyone who smokes it becomes possessed is so good and funny and something I desperately want to see, but the majority of this movie is just flashbacks to Dustin Ferguson’s previous two entries, AMITYVILLE TOYBOX and AMITYVILLE CLOWNHOUSE.
43. Amityville Scarecrow (2021)
Did you know there was an Amityville in England? I’m pretty sure there’s not, but these people really want you to believe there is just so they don’t have to attempt American accents. Despite taking place across the pond, it’s still meant to be the same Amityville as the other movies, I guess. They tore down the house and now it’s a camp… that doesn’t look like a camp. Whatever. The scarecrow makeup is actually really good, so that’s something.
44. Amityville Cult (2021)
Stanley DeFeo inherits the family home in Amityville from his estranged grandmother. There are a lot of flashback scenes of the grandmother boning a demon and leaving their child outside of a church for someone else to find, a lot of whispering, and a local yahoo that’s actually right about there being a cult getting ignored by the main character. Stanley is insistent that demon worship isn’t a real thing people do even though there are weird things happening and he can hear whispers of strange guttural chanting on the wind. Did I mention this all happens in Amityville, Texas?
45. The Amityville Playhouse (2015)
When a girl inherits a theater following her parents’ death, she brings along some friends to stay the weekend in it with her so they can check the place out. A haunted theater would be cool, or a killer stalking the people inside like POPCORN, but this is neither really. Most scenes are filmed in backstage areas and basically nothing happens the entire time. I read that most of the cast consists of high school drama volunteers and I hope they all got Fs.
46. Amityville Thanksgiving (2022)
Barely an Amityville movie, barely a Thanksgiving movie, but full of weirdness, AMITYVILLE THANKSGIVING boasts a turkey costume sex scene, some of the worst CGI I’ve seen in my life, truly perplexing dialogue, thick New York accents, and cannibalism. All in all, not that bad.
47. Amityville: No Escape (2016)
You wanna see two found footage movies at the same time? Boy, do I have just the thing for you! A group of campers in the woods around Amityville are filming their trip while they attempt to “better understand fear”. Interspersed with this footage is the video diary of a woman who lived in the house on Ocean Avenue. Neither one is particularly interesting and not much happens, but it’s more competently made than the other found footage efforts.
48. Amityville: Vanishing Point (2016)
You can see the good intentions - dreamy dialogue and music, surreal camera shots, interesting set dressings and costuming, a quote from a Meatloaf song for some reason, basement people (whatever those are). But none of it is executed well, which makes it pretty hard to get through.
49. The Amityville Haunting (2011)
A found footage Asylum version of Amityville, only they live in a house that looks nothing like the Amityville house, they get details from the previous films and real story very wrong, and I'm not entirely sure a script exists. Normally you don’t need much of one for this kind of thing, but the actors seem to have the tendency to go too hard when it’s not called for and phone it in during what are meant to be tense scenes.
50. Ghosts of Amityville (2022)
You remember that scene in Mystery Science Theater 3000’s MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE episode where Joel finally snaps and screams “do something!” when the movie’s slow? That.
This movie is a dream within a dream within a dream, et al. that follows a little girl while she attempts to process the grief of her mother’s death and is simultaneously seeing a clown lurking around the woods. It’s honestly rough to get through and if you watch it for fun without being a completist, you have my respect.
51. Amityville: Mt. Misery Road (2018)
Okay, look, there’s no skirting around it, this is bad. A couple of “ghost enthusiasts” go down to Mt. Misery Road (a real-life place that’s supposedly haunted) and just sort of wander around for a while before disappearing. The thing that gets me about this one is that the couple are married in real life and are the writers, directors, stars, producers, everything of this movie and I hope that someday someone loves me enough to make a vanity project for me to star in that’s essentially gibberish.
52. Amityville Hex (2021)
I hate the idea of saying bad things about movies that someone put their effort, time, and passion into, but this honestly feels like they didn’t really have much of a script, offered a bunch of Kickstarter rewards to have a part in the movie, and then were forced to fulfill those promises. A bunch of YouTubers chant a “hex” into the camera and slowly devolve into psychopaths that kill one another or themselves. It takes a long time for the deaths to happen and there’s a lot of ranting that happens over the 108-minute runtime. This would’ve been a very cool short film, but as it is it’s definitely not one of the best things I’ve ever sat through.
With eleven more Amityville movies (THE AMITYVILLE EXORCIST, AMITYVILLE DEATH TOILET, AMITYVILLE TURKEY DAY, AMITYVILLE RIDE-SHARE, THE AMITYVILLE CURSE, AMITYVILLE LEPRECHAUN, AMITYVILLE GHOSTS, AMITYVILLE GERMANY, AMITYVILLE SHARK HOUSE, AMITYVILLE BIGFOOT, and AMITYVILLE ARCADE) on the horizon, my journey to complete the franchise doesn’t seem like it’s going to end anytime soon and maybe I’ve broken my brain by doing this, but I’m kind of looking forward to continuing to watch them all as they’re released.
