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HAUNTINGS ON THE SET OF 'AMITYVILLE' REMAKE
Date: October 28, 2004
Source: Zap2it
Full Article: here

Just walking through the house where they're remaking "The Amityville Horror" is a bit spooky. The pointed roof looms over a boggy swamp, and it seems ominous, like the "Psycho" house. There're steps winding up past a rickety boat house and through cattails to a long Craftsman-style porch and big creaky doors.

The boat house, the pointy roof and even the cattails are fake -- created by the filmmakers who are remaking the based-on-fact haunted house story. But, the house is real enough.

Originally, the MGM/Dimension team was going to build a house on the other side of the lake which is surrounded by farms and cornfields. A fisherman's body was found nearby (police don't suspect foul play, he just fell overboard and drowned), and then a storm literally washed away the land where they planned to build.

Someone recommended this house on the lake which had been abandoned for nearly half a century, and on the first day of shooting, security people saw a shadow on the upper floors of the house. Although they surrounded the house, and sheriff's deputies looked everywhere, they never found anyone or anything.

Now, Ryan Reynolds, best known for "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," and Melissa George, from "Alias," are starring as the couple who move into a house with spirits that seem to emanate from the family who was brutally murdered in the house years before. The story is based on George and Kathy Lutz, who bought a house on Long Island in New York where an entire family had been murdered in their beds. After less than a month, the Lutz's fled their dream home, no longer able to deal with the evil they felt emanating from the house.

"The whole thing creeps me out," George tells Zap2it.com during a visit to the set after she spent five weeks filming at house. "There's a lot of rain, he is strangling me and it got into me a little bit, it was a little disturbing. There was a lot of blood, too."

Strolling through the house, there's "Katch 'em Kill 'em" scrawled on the walls in red, and the children's rooms with bloodstained sheets.

Wearing a shawl, as if to protect her neck, George says she spent off camera time going to Six Flags with the three children she is supposed to have, but she still had the creeps all the time on the set. "I once walked into my trailer and my wardrobe girl scared me almost to death," the actress recalls.

Although she's not normally a fan of scary movies, and admits, "the original was in real need of a makeover," she has had real-life experience with the supernatural. "I lived in an house that was a hospital in the 1800s in Sydney and there was a cemetery in the backyard," George says. "There were lots of sounds and feelings of a presence all the time there."

Reynolds is almost unrecognizable in a full beard, a "James Brolin 2000 look" he quips. He just finished playing a vampire in "Blade: Trinity" which is coming out later this year, and says he's looking forward to having audiences see him in different characters. He actually lobbied hard for this part.

"This character of George Lutz has a lot of rage, and it's tough to reach in and access that," Reynolds explains. "Although there's humor in the film, because every good horror movie has to have that, I had to spend a week-and-a-half working with a coach to make sure that my sarcastic meter wasn't coming through."

Reynolds wasn't joking around when he attacks George in the film, and he recalls, "Once I stopped because she was crying and I thought I really hurt her. She looked really terrified and I left marks on her neck. She told me that your body doesn't know the difference whether it's really happening to you or it's acting."

In the film, he slaps the older child and abuses the other children by yelling at them. Reynolds laughs, "No, I didn't bond with them, I don't even know their names. What I think is really scary is parents who let their kids go into acting at 5 years old."

Five-year-old actress Chloe Grace Moretz, who plays the couple's daughter, does a scene on the sharp slopes of the house, which is a hybrid of Gothic, Colonial, Craftsman and American Clapboard styles.

"She was astonishing, I was more scared than she was," recalls director Andrew Douglas, who is making his feature film debut with this movie. "Any of us would be hard-pressed to be up there walking on the roof, and within an hour, she thought it was fun."

Douglas, who previously worked on TV commercials and the documentary "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus" for the BBC, says he studied Wes Craven's horror films before taking this project.

"There is a mathematics to the pacing and shooting that makes it scary," Douglas says, while seated at an Italian restaurant in Buffalo Grove, Illinois where they are shooting a relatively calm scene. In the other room, George and Reynolds are sharing a plate of spaghetti and talking about some of the strange happenings going on at the house.

"Sure, the original was kind of cheesy," says the director. "It feels kind of dated, but our job is to ratchet that up and really scare the audience. "It's a balancing act."

Meanwhile, on the set, Reynolds is dressed in a turtleneck shirt and George leans over during the scene and wipes some sauce off it. They kiss over the table, and when they break, George says, "I sweat when I laugh." She's then powdered by makeup.

The wine glasses are refilled with grape juice, and they shoot the scene again. The elderly couple in the next booth and the waiter perform the same movements they did before to provide the necessary background as extras.

Suddenly someone yells "Cut" because a cell phone is going off. Producer Andrew Form answers the phone and whispers some information, and then listens.

"That was Michael Bay," announces Form. The "Pearl Harbor" action film producer is always apprised about the film project as it progresses, and offers suggestions even though at the moment he's on the other side of the world on location.

"Yes, he's always involved," confirms Form.

"The Amityville Horror" is scheduled for release on April 15, 2005.