None of the computer-assisted "gotchas!" or blood-soaked cutaways in "The Amityville Horror" remake match the fear factor of its simplest shots - low-angle exteriors of the demon-looking Long Island home itself. Its two eerily-lit, upper-story windows are the darting peepers of a cross-eyed demon, glaring straight through your bones, willing unspeakable torment to your very marrow. Director Andrew Douglas seems to realize that the shot of soundless agony is the most effective thing he has going, so he cuts to it countless times in his otherwise dippy horror flick. The tale of a haunted house that wins a battle with a family in the 1970s, purportedly based on a true story, falls far short of the agonizing frights of the 1979 original, which was so scary it gave you nightmares. And by "you" I mean "me." That version, directed by Stuart Rosenberg, made do with skimpier special effects and harnessed its scares with misdirection and inference rather than all-out boogety-boo. Douglas' gory take on "Amity" is no more frightening than Disney's "The Haunted Mansion." Things don't go bump in the night in this movie; they wake you up, introduce themselves and pull up a chair for a cup of coffee. The spooks are relegated to such odd practices as turning on the television, unlocking doors and, most pathetically, rearranging refrigerator letter magnets to spell out threatening messages. Give credit to Ryan Reynolds, a comic trying to stretch, for propping up a look of dread on his face during the goofy proceedings. Then again, maybe he was looking off-camera at the script. Reynolds plays George Lutz, a contractor who moves his new wife, Kathy (Melissa George), and her three kids from a previous marriage into the creaky Dutch Colonial in 1975. The Lutzes get a bargain because the house is priced to move, due to a mass murder that took place there a year before. The real-estate agent's jittery soft-selling technique is worth a few chuckles, as she subtly steers George and Kathy away from ghostly happenings on a walk-through. The sequence is a gem, and leans comic in a way the film seems insistent on steering itself, especially given Reynolds' tendency to steal a few scenes with his witty asides. If Douglas had gone with the flow and made an all-out comedy, he might have had something. Instead, the film turns into a low-rent copy of "The Grudge," with atmospheric nonsense that never coalesces into genuine creepiness. For reasons never explained, the spirits possess George, transforming him into a murderous killer, and the littlest Lutz makes friends with a ghost her age who tempts her to suicide, all while Kathy screams her pretty head off. After weeks of haunting, it still doesn't occur to these people to move out. The film's 82 minutes seem like two hours. That's the horror in this "Amityville."