"The Belle Witches have to revisit their magical talents to deter the evil Dominique Marcom from trying to raise the demon Botis into the world."

You may read the sell line from this and wonder -- a movie with an alternate title of Witches of Amityville Academy -- "Is this an Amityville movie?" And i"m wondering, "Are all movies Amityville movies?" Because at this point, I feel like I'm in a non-Faustian bargain. I feel compelled to watch all of these movies and really get no reward.

After receiving an acceptance letter from Dominique's (Amanda Jade-Tyler, who is in the upcoming Amityvole Scarecrow 2 and oh no, I have to watch that one as well) prestigious Amityville Academy for witches, Jessica (Sarah T. Cohen, who was in Hellkat and Medusa) soon learns that only the Belle Witches can save her from a demon. A demon named Bortis who is also known as Otis -- I am not making that up -- and is discussed in the Lesser Key of Solomon as a President and an Earl who initially appears as a viper before changing into a sword-toting, fanged and horned human who likes to talk about the past, present and future. He also rules 60 legions of demons.

The good witches of this movie all definitely shop at Ann Taylor Loft and Pottery Barn because they look late 40s attractive upper class -- I'd say South Hills but yinz aren't all from Pittsburgh -- and they just like to chill and sip on tea and gossip. Sam (Kira Reed Lorsch, Chained Heat 2001: Slave Lovers and on Playboy's Sexcetera before being an early internet adult adopter and creating Married Couple Live with her husband in the early 2000s),Ellena (Brittan Taylor, Space Girls in Beverly Hills) and Lucy (Donna Spangler, who was The Coal Miner's Daughter in the wrestling group POWW and also played Hugs Higgins in the Andy Sidaris movie Guns, Mee-Shell in Dinosaur Valley Girls and Katanna in Space Girls in Beverly Hills) are those Belle Witches and they're fabulous.

Director Rebecca Matthews (The Candy Witch, Pet Graveyard) and writer Tom Jolliffe (Jurassic Island) have done the impossible: they've made a non-Amityville Amityville movie that didn't make me question why I do this. I'm all for a web series of the Belle Witches where they bemoan the closing of Chicco's in their mall or battle a series of zombie Karens or just sit around and drink tea and talk about their husbands.

So calling it "Amityville Academy" wasn't enough to save this one. It was silly and the people in it were like cardboards. It isn't even horror, or fantasy. I don't even know what kind of film it is. An awful film with awful acting. It seems they've forgotten how to make decent films now.

Well, this 2020 movie having the word "Amityville" in it already made some alarms go off. Usually movies that have that word in the title tend to be dubious at best. There haven't been any proper horror movies with that name in the title for quite some time.

So it was with some reluctance that I sat down to watch "Witches of Amityville Academy" from writer Tom Jolliffe and director Rebecca Matthews, and I wasn't really having much of any high hopes or expectations to the movie, to be frank.

But I will say that "Witches of Amityville Academy" was actually not as bad as it could have been. Sure, this is by no means in the league of being an extraordinary horror movie, by no account. But there are far worse additions out there to the horror genre, so it wasn't all bad.

The storyline was pretty straightforward, actually to the point where it felt like director Rebecca Matthews was just running the show on auto-pilot. There weren't really any grand ups and downs along the way as the movie progressed, which made for a rather bland and monotonous storytelling.

Sure, the movie had a "Gilmore Girls" feel to it, and that was mostly because of casted actress Kira Reed Lorsch. And there was also a tingling at the back of my mind going: "this is very reminiscent of The Asylum trying to cash in on the 2020 remake of "The Craft"..."

The acting in the movie was adequate. I mean, it was not stellar performances, and some of the dialogue was delivered with lukewarm gusto, but all in all the performances were sufficient to carry the movie.

What surprised me about "Witches of Amityville Academy" was the special effects. While it wasn't blockbuster Hollywood CGI, the effects were actually good enough and definitely served their purposes and brought the movie to life in a satisfactory enough manner.

"Witches of Amityville Academy" was actually adequately entertaining for what it turned out to be. My rating of the movie settles on a four out of ten stars.