This post was originally published on Audible.com.
The haunting tale of The Amityville Horror has gripped readers and viewers alike, with 10 films having been produced relating to or depicting the haunting after the original book written by Jay Anson was published in 1977. For this book vs. movie breakdown, I’ll detail which medium is most spine-chilling, and even clear up some fact vs. fiction around the events that take place in this grisly story...
What is The Amityville Horror?
The Amityville Horror is a horror novel by Jay Anson based on a series of hauntings experienced by the Lutz family in Amityville, on the south side of Long Island, New York. While the story was tremendously successful, controversy around the accuracy of the tale has surrounded the book since it's publication. Some experts will swear this story is real. Others will point to incongruous details and call it a hoax. We’ll leave that up to you to decide, after listening. Is it true or false... did these paranormal events really happen or was it all concocted for show?
What we do know for sure is that the initial tragedy that led to the story being either told or created is indeed true — a man did in fact murder his entire family in his Ocean Avenue home, killing his parents and his siblings. The next year, a new family, the Lutzes, moved into the house. Here is where the spooky story so many of us are familiar with begins: an unrelenting haunting by demonic forces that led the family to flee the possessed old home after only 28 days...
Which is Scarier, Book or Movie?
If you love horror, chances are good that you’re on board to get a bit spooked. While the films are definitely spine-chilling, the book elicits a different, some might say scarier fear. For me, the terror comes into play mainly because of how the book is written, which is in the form of a log, or a diary. The diary chronicles each day spent in the haunted house from the day the family moves in, until the 28th day when the Lutz family flees, leaving everything behind.
The film adaptations, and for this comparison I'll refer to the 2005 remake starring Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George, have the power of cinema behind them: the lighting, the terrifying music, the image of green slime oozing from the floorboards...and don't get me wrong, I was terrified from watching the film. In fact, I slept with the lights on for a good week after finishing it. But to me, the book, which felt more realistic and reflective of what could be reality (and more like it could actually happen to me) got to me more. Each entry had me thinking that this could be my diary, this haunting could be happening in my house....
0ur verdict: Book
Which is a More Accurate Portrayal of True Events, Book or Movie?
The number of varying accounts and opinions about what actually happened in the house on Ocean Avenue following the tragic murders are so numerous it's hard to recount them all. To give you a sense, the long list of people who have done extensive research on the subject and have been interviewed publicly include historians, lawyers, authors, ghost hunters and psychics. Here's what we know of the facts and fiction behind the book:
Facts:
On November 13th, 1974, a young man of 23 named Ronald Defeo Jr. murdered six family members while they slept in their beds including his two brothers, his two sisters, and both of his parents.
Ronald Defeo Jr. was arrested for the crime, convicted, and sentenced to prison where he remained until his death in March of 2021.
One year after the bloody massacre, a new family bought and moved into the empty house in Amityville, Long Island: the Lutz family.
The Lutz family fled the house after just 28 days of residence, claiming to have been terrorized by demon spirits.
Fiction:
In the book and film, police are said to have been called to the house many times, but police records show that during the 28 days that the Lutz family lived in the house on Ocean Avenue, police were never called.
The Lutz family details having found demonic hoofprints in the snow, but weather records show that there had been no snowfall during the period they claimed to have seen the hoofprints.
Both the book and film make claims that the home was severely damaged by the demonic beings that were haunting the family, but upon inspection, the original hardware of the home remained intact.
Eyewitnesses and forensic investigations have repeatedly refuted claims of the haunting made by the Lutz family.
The Shinnecock Tribe, which were referred to in both the book and film adaptations as part of the reasons for the hauntings, lived nowhere near Amityville and actually lived about 70 miles away in Long Island. Furthermore, there is no evidence of Native American burial grounds or insane asylums in Amityville as both book and movie suggest.
Ronald Defeo’s lawyer William Weber stated that he and the Lutzes “created this horror story over many bottles of wine”, yet George Lutz maintains that the events described in the book are mostly true.
Our verdict: Book
Both book and movie include details that have more than likely been stretched to the point of fiction. However, the film adaptations, specifically the 2005 remake bring a new level of exaggeration to supposedly true events, and also conjure completely fictional events that the Lutzes never claimed to have happened in their initial interviews which were used as the basis of the 1977 novel. For example, George Lutz never claimed to have been possessed to the point of nearly harming his own wife and children, like Ryan Reynolds does in the film.
Character Development, Book Vs. Movie:
Part of what makes The Amityville Horror so terrifying is that, presumably, these horrible hauntings could happen to any family that moved into a haunted house with a horrendous, bloody history. Probably because of this (the fact that the Lutz family was meant to resemble any American family), we don’t get much character development in the book. Each character remains relatively thin and serves as a kind of backdrop onto which the story unfolds.
In the 2005 film adaptation we see the characters grow and shift more, most of all the father of the Lutz family, George Lutz, portrayed by Ryan Reynolds. The character of George Lutz becomes more moody and angry as the film continues and we see the effect that living in the haunted house has on him, in fact, we see that he begins to act and even look more like Ronald Defeo Jr. who carried out the initial murders...
Our verdict: Movie
