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Day #3: Amy (2013)

As Amy (Jessica DiGiovanni) starts to manifest clairvoyant powers, she recognises that something evil has possessed a member of her Amish community. She must now work with Chris (Christopher Atkins), a mortician cum magic-making-guy, in order to save her family and friends from its corrupting influence.

My take:

I was introduced to the world of horror by movies like Chucky, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Hellraiser. This has had a definite influence on my taste in movies, making me partial to horror movies that embrace their own corniness. In short, I’m a proponent of the ‘so bad that it’s good’ maxim.

Objectively speaking, Amy is not a good movie. Jessica DiGiovanni isn’t exactly terrible, but her cast mates are laughably bad actors. In fact, I’m pretty sure there’s at least one scene where DiGiovanni is prompting one particular woman to remember her lines – and this isn’t even one of the most painful scenes to watch.

Despite allegedly being Amish (there’s bonnets, and plenty of scenes involving horse-drawn carts to prove it!), Amy seems to have no problem with dabbling in magic rituals run by a guy wearing a big black cape, who declares that he needs to “do something powerful” to her. Given that she comes from a community where demonic possessions are shrugged off with what essentially amounts to a “meh, whatevs,” attitude though, I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised.

This is the kind of masterful writing that we’re dealing with, here.

Following this same theme, Amy‘s score is a collection of generic ‘scary movie sound effects,’ which work quite nicely with the generic horror movie story line, special effects that your average teen on YouTube would be happy to replicate, and really bad CGI.

I must admit, I wasn’t expecting the big reveal at the culmination of this movie. I won’t go into the details of why it bugged me (I’m trying to be as non-spoilerish in these write-ups as possible), but sufficed to say that it was a bit too out of left field for me.

Still, I think it’s pretty clear by now that I thought this movie was great (minus the big reveal). By which I mean it was so bad, and so corny, that it was thoroughly entertaining.

My recommendation? Grab some popcorn, get comfy on the lounge, and enjoy the hilarity that is Amy.