‘Amityville Job Interview’ Doesn’t Get the Job Done [The Amityville IP]

Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”

As we discussed last time, executive producer, writer, and director Nick Box released three different Amityville films in a single week (April 13-20) in 2023. The first was the abysmal Amityville Frankenstein. The second was Amityville Job Interview, which Box co-wrote and co-directed with Stuart Fitzsimmons.

This is another repurposed film that debuted years earlier under a different name. Originally released in 2018 under the title Strange Vibes, Box’s second Amityville film is a step up from the “no budget, no plot, no point” antics of Frankenstein, but there’s still plenty of needless padding, questionable acting, and poor technical elements.

In the film, Alana (Jade Mason) is an unemployed woman on the cusp of being evicted. She lives with a roommate (more on that later) and is struggling to find work because she’s not a very good employee. She is chronically late and easily distracted; she has no CV and she struggles to answer questions under pressure.

These qualities are explored early on when Alana is confronted by her roommate Daria, a blonde woman who admits that she lied on her CV but balks at the idea of Alana copying her resume. It’s hypocritical, but that’s one of Amityville Job Interviews interests: what does “good work” vs “hard work” look like? Who deserves success and at what cost?

These ideas are extrapolated on further in a number of unrelated subplots. One is a self-help video featuring Job Search Guy (Shawn C. Phillips), who offers strategies on how to succeed in the job market. The other is an interview with 80s Popstar (Chan Walrus), who reflects on his success, accusations of stealing from other artists, and, finally, the nature of good vs evil that resides inside us all.

That part comes late in the 74 minute film at a point when the non-linear narrative has begun to circle back on itself. The film opens with Alana in an interview room and ends when she gets the call to set it up.

Initially things seem totally fine. Kindly assistant Clare (Georgina Burford) reassures her that the boss is nice and easy to work for, but the vibe changes when Ms. Vil Bitch (Sihona Robbins) enters.

Over the course of the interview, Ms. Bitch becomes increasingly brusque and standoffish. Despite Clare’s initial claims, Ms. Bitch is cruel to her assistant, ringing a literal bell to demand water and coffee, and publicly demeaning her. The abhorrent behavior continues as the interview evolves to become a sexual and violent nightmare and both Clare and Alana are degraded.*

*Oddly it sometimes plays like a low-budget Amityville version of Compliance.

This is when the (admittedly surface-level) interrogation of power and corruption within the workforce is strongest. There are less-than-subtle cues that something is off about both the interview and Ms. Bitch, though early on it’s hard to distinguish if it’s bad writing, amateur performances, or an intended part the plot.

By the time the zebra vibrator, cunnilingus and gun come out, it’s pretty clear that much of this uneasiness is deliberate, though the film would have been stronger if it had stayed in this sexually volatile arena, rather than using distractions to pad the runtime. The frequent breaks from the interview throughout the first two parts of the film undermine all of the building tension, so by the time things go off the rails in the last act, the visceral impact has been lost.

There’s an interesting kernel of an idea at the heart of Amityville Job Interview, but Box and Fitzsimmons either don’t know how to build a feature around it or don’t trust the material to stand on its own. It’s a shame because there’s some intriguing moments in the film, but they’re too sporadic to amount to much.

The Amityville IP Awards go to…

• B/W vs Color: Unlike Amityville Frankenstein, Box and Fitzsimmons don’t film exclusively in black and white. While Alana’s scenes (both at home and in the interview) are monochromatic, Job Search Guy and 80s Popstar are in color. Aside from distinguishing Alana’s scenes from the ones where she’s absent, though, there’s no clear narrative or thematic impetus for this creative decision.
• Hallucinatory Double Roommates: Amityville Job Interview’s timeline becomes increasingly hallucinatory in its back half. The zebra vibrator that Ms. Bitch handles in the interview becomes a murder weapon that Alana uses to beat roommate Daria to death and later, after Alana has died by suicide, the film rewinds to revisit a phone call with a different scene and a new roommate (now played by Fitzsimmons). This moment goes unremarked upon by the characters and the narrative (it wouldn’t be the first time an indie film recasts a character or introduces someone new because scheduling fell through), but it adds to the hallucinatory, Mulholland Drive-lite plot.
• 6 Mins?! That aforementioned rewind moment would be *much* more powerful if it wasn’t nearly six whole minutes (hello padding!). Also: ending the film on a lengthy, mostly uninteresting conversation between Alana and the new roommate before she gets the call is significantly less impactful than if the film had ended with a previously dead Alana waking up, seemingly now in the employ of Ms. Bitch and her nefarious “services rendered” company.
• Music Videos: It’s difficult to tell if the music videos that are interspersed in the narrative are meant to be a younger version of the 80s Popstar (presumably?) but aside from some on the nose lyrics, these also feel like Box and Fitzsimmons trying to stretch the runtime. One time would have been enough!

Next time: our journey into Nick Box’s contribution to the “franchise” wraps up with 2023’s Amityville Elevator, which is often classified as a spoof. We’ll see how that goes!

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Originally Published Here.