If I was born fifteen years after the publication of The Amityville Horror; if I didn't live in the modern-day world where screaming, furniture-throwing, door-slamming, air-conditioning ghosts were a trend; if I hadn't gone through Insidious, The Conjuring, Annabelle, 1408, Sinister, Grave Encounters, the Paranormal movies; if I were a chickenshit unaccustomed to ghost stories, maybe--just maybe--I would enjoy Jay Anson's The Amityville Horror. But it's 2017: this kind of horror is soporifically old--ancient, even. The only thing I was scared of was reading this book and thinking it was a waste of time. 
 The characters, I'm afraid, did not worry me for a bit. They're too paperdoll-like to even bother, which is ironic because The Amityville Horror was supposedly based on true events. You would think that a nonfiction book would employ a genuine characterization provided the persons involved in the story are real. Instead I was introduced to characters so dull they didn't even annoy me. I felt nothing toward them. They could have died a horrible, painful death and I'd be in my bed reading that scene, yawning. I'm sure the Lutzes were an interesting family. I believe the fault lies upon the writer they chose to tell their story. 
 Jay Anson is a writer who had, unfortunately, a short attention span. He had that aggravating style of telling the story through the perspective of one character for a paragraph or two, then jumping into another character's perspective for another paragraph or two, then jumping into a third character's perspective for a paragraph or two . . . the cycle goes on. It's almost head-hopping, except he's separating POVs in paragraphs. I despise this kind of narrative technique because it impedes a character from developing. How could he/she develop when he/she is given only a paragraph or two from time to time? Imagine a band of singers performing onstage with only one microphone (and it's not even the best quality in the stores). There's a lot of snatching, grappling, and protesting about who gets to sing with it. That's how head-hopping sounds like. 
 As for the plot, nothing transpired much except ghosts pestering the family throughout the book. There wasn't even a resolution. They just finally decided to leave the house and never come back. The end. I am aware that it's allegedly based on real events, and that the author was, I'm sure, not permitted to add in a dramatic, explosive ending. But it still doesn't avoid the fact that the ending was a much, much bigger disappointment than the rest of the book. I expected at the very least a lot of ceiling-crawling, flying across the room, apparations, and blood. 
 I'd also boldly go and say that The Amityville Horror somewhat resembles The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Rip-off is a strong word. I wouldn't use it to describe The Amityville Horror, but it's somewhere in the middle of that. Two stars, sadly.