Amityville AI — Amityville AI( DVD)
Amityville AI is an ultra-low-budget tech horror film from Milan, Michigan, based Matt Jaissle (The Necro Files, Gobblefoot, Maws). It follows an AI expert who moves into a house in the infamous Amityville area, where an axe murder occurred in the 70’s, and now the killer has seemingly affected the house's AI system. Here from SRS Cinema is a DVD release of the picture- taking in directors commentary track.
Like much of Mr Jaissle's work, Amityville AI has a runtime of just over seventy minutes, with the whole thing having a good blend of pacy plotting and atmosphere. The film largely focuses on one person, Stuart Birdsall (William Childress) a bearded, bespectacled, ponytailed, shirt-and-tie-wearing AI expert.
The film opens with black-and-white snapping pictures like flashback, where we see a group of biker/ stoners playing pool- a figure bursts in with a sack mask on, covered with occult symbols & is carrying an axe- they are all killed, and we cut in to the film's credits, which blend a brooding, yet bass-throbbing & beat-bound cue over the top of images of speeding by technical drawings, circuit boards, maps, and pictures of the twin windowed top floor house in the film.
As we get into the film, Stuart makes his way to his new house in Amityville, stopping briefly to ring his wife, as he is so excited about the new place. He sets up sensors all around the new house, which are controlled by the male talking AI hub... anyway, fairly soon things start going amiss….a hedge trimmer & rotavator turn on their own... before things go seriously high-wire.
Attack/ kill wise we get an electrocution, a fight with a punk sex bot, dive bombing drones, a car crash, and the return of the lumbering spirit of the axe-carrying killer. There’s a little bit of blood, but nothing too intense.
The story/ plot is fairly pacy, and Childress sells well enough the at first cocky/ sure of him self AI expert- who gets rapidly more freaked out/ fearful. The synth score helps- moving between mid-paced and more uneasy fare, there’s also a slugging doom track which bookends the film. Amityville AI is another entertaining film from Mr Jaissle, with the director putting his own twist on the AI horror thriller genre.
Extra wise, we get a commentary track from the director, and as I’ve come to expect from Mr Jaissle, it’s a most informative/ down to earth affair. He starts by saying this is the 100th film to use the Amityville name. We find out he was just presented with a title and a poster from SRS Cinema’s Ron Bonk, and had to fill in the rest. He points out a small cameo he has in the flashback scene. He points out the opening Tangerine Dream like open cue. We find out the exterior of the house was filmed in Adrian, Michigan, and the interior at his parents' house. He touches on the film's lead Childress, who he’s now done a few films with. Later on, he comments on some of the locations. He talks about how easy it would be for AI to track you these days, due to the number of security cameras around these days. He chats about the use of fake blood in his films, which sometimes the actors take a long time to wash out. How he washed out the colour palette in this film, and much more.
I’ll have to admit I’ve been a little cynical about the number of films in the last decade or so that have used the Amityville name. But I must say I was presently surprised by Amityville AI, as Jaissle gives his own back story/ twist on proceedings. As well as presenting an entertaining low-budget horror film.