Van Just Got Wilder

The horror, the horror! We like Ryan Reynolds here at Empire. We really do. The guy's got comic timing up the wazoo, and an innate touch of the Chevy Chases, the Dan Aykroyds and the Jim Carreys all rolled into one. He's even reported to kick mucho asso as vampire hunter Hannibal King in the forthcoming Blade: Trinity. And just to prove that he's an all-round kinda nice guy, he's only gorn and got engaged to Alanis Morisette! Yep, all is peachy and rosy in the Reynolds garden. So at first glance, his decision to sign on for the forthcoming remake of The Amityville Horror seems, well, a bit of a backward step. Yet look more closely and it might just work. The remake is being produced by Michael Bay and written by Scott Kosar, the same team that brought us last year's middling The Texas Chainsaw Massacre redo. Yet while that time they were up against a recognised classic, The Amityville Horror's reputation has waned over the years, dragged down by innumerable shitty sequels and the still-too-fresh memory of Rod Steiger hamming it up something rotten as a priest. So effectively the slate is clean. And there's no doubt that there is real potential in the story. Just another haunted house tale? Perhaps. But The Amityville Horror is based on the purportedly true story of the Lutz family, who moved into the house in 1975, a year after a multiple murder was committed there. They left just 28 days later in a damned hurry, citing various levels of paranormal activity as the catalyst. Their story was turned into a book, written by Jay Anson, and the veracity of their tale is still being debated some years on. It's likely that the remake - which will star Reynolds as George Lutz, the patriarch of the family (played by James Brolin in the original) - will reignite the debate. Hopefully it'll be damned scary, too.