(a.k.a. AMITYVILLE: IT’S ABOUT TIME. Director: Tony Randel. Screenplay by Christopher DeFaria and Antonio Toro, based on John G. Jones’s 1988 advertised-as-fiction book, AMITYVILLE: THE EVIL ESCAPES.)
Storyline
An architect brings home an antique mantle clock he bought during his business travels, unaware that it’s an evil, time-and-space-warping machine.
Review
Burlwood, California. Jacob Sterling (Stephen Macht, GRAVEYARD SHIFT, 1990), an architect and intense person, returns to his suburban house from a business trip during which he picked up an antique clock. Unaware or dismissive of the history of the notorious house it came from, he’s excited to place on it on the mantle above their fireplace.
His teenage children, Lisa (Megan Ward, TRANCERS II, 1991) and Rusty (Damon Martin, GHOULIES II, 1987), are happy to see him, as is his ex-girlfriend and art student Andrea Livingston (Shawn Weatherly, SHADOWZONE, 1990), who watched the kids while Jacob was gone.
Jacob convinces Andrea─in spite of her new boyfriend─to spend the night with him. Rusty─spirited, good-hearted, and sensitive─senses something weird about the clock, but he’s not sure what it is. One of the neighbors’ dogs (Peaches) also knows something’s wrong, and barks outside the Sterlings’ backdoor late at night, running away when Rusty opens the door to let the dog in.
The next day, Peaches, normally a peaceable canine, attacks Jacob while he goes on his morning run. Jacob, seriously wounded, survives the attack. The wound extends Andrea’s stay with the Sterlings, delighting Jacob─he wants her back. Weird stuff happens, like brief time-and-space shifts for those living within the house, and Jacob’s go-getter personality becomes darker, verging on violent─he refuses to have his bandages changed, despite his festering wounds.
After a spate of mean-spirited neighborhood vandalism, dark personality changes, and bizarre deaths of those near the Sterlings, the situation comes to a head, and Jacob goes full-psycho, with his clock-dominated house as a reality-shifting accomplice.
The clever dovetail ending is relatively happy and good, a creative breath of fresh air in a genre that too often favors unnecessary darkness in its filmic wrap-ups. (Shock or the-evil-survived finishes need not bash viewers over the head with obviousness, and such endings should do more than further a franchise’s financial profitability or be used to hide the fact that the filmmakers are creatively spent, producer-pushed or lazy.)
TIME is a good, low-budget, and slick B-flick, its storyline a mix of WAXWORK (1988) and a metaphor for toxic relationships. TIME is better than the two previous AMITYVILLE outings (AMITYVILLE 3-D, 1983, and AMITYVILLE HORROR: THE EVIL ESCAPES, 1989), building on the loosely linked storyline of ESCAPES.
Randel’s direction and DeFaria and Toro’s screenplay keeps the relatively goreless TIME moving along at a mostly solid, entertaining pace (even if I did wonder why Andrea stuck around the Sterlings’ disturbing household), with an effective object backstory that adds depth to this film and (possibly) the AMITYVILLE franchise, with all its disparate works.
TIME’s cast, ranging from good to great, is effective as well, with Macht nailing Jacob’s increasingly menacing attitude, Weatherly capably embodying Andrea’s flaws, struggles and overall good nature as she tries to save the Sterlings, and Nina Talbot (PUPPET MASTER II, 1990) as Iris Wheeler, Rusty’s afterschool chess-playing partner and occult-savvy neighbor. Fans of screen legend Dick Miller (PIRANHA, 1978) might be delighted to see his brief turn here as Mr. Anderson, who helps put out a yard fire.
TIME, a mostly fun, low-budget time-space-horror flick, is worth your time if you keep your expectations realistic about its budget, its era (the slick-flick 1980s-1990s), and don’t mind a few eye-rolling tropes (e.g., Andrea and Jacob’s sex scene) during its run-time.
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