Haunted house horror flicks are so much fun to watch. That’s because it is easy to make your audience cringe when you are working with something as mysterious and as elusive as an old house full of dark history.

The film “The Amityville Horror” is a reworked version of the boring 1979 disaster. The 2005 version loosely follows the original with the same names and time frame. George and Kathy Lutz (Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George) move their family of three into an elaborate Colonial home in Amityville on Long Island.

Even after learning about the macabre murders that took place in the home, the young couple makes the move anyway in an eerie abode. Only days after residing in the house, the family becomes confronted by strange occurrences and disturbing sightings, especially George, who is actually the stepfather to Kathy’s children.

George becomes increasingly loathsome toward his family, which seems to be brought on by sinister voices coming from the house that insinuate he repeat the grisly slaying that Ronald DeFeo carried out, the former resident who murdered his family.

The revamped “Amityville Horror” is not a horror film masterpiece like the 1961 film “The Innocents,” richly based on Henry James’novel “The Turn of the Screw.” But the film can carry out the mission of scaring the general public. As the movie progresses, the plot does build with psychological suspense, and every now and then a ghoulish image flashes onto the scene that could cause any audience member to recoil in horror.

One of the best features about the film, however, are the words “based on a true story.” The story of the Lutz family is the alleged account of real-life occurrences given to Jay Anson, who wrote the best-selling book which inspired the first movie. The Lutz family tale might be a product of an overworked imagination, but the DeFeo homicide, which is vividly portrayed in the opening scenes, is in fact a true story.

On Nov. 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. crept into the rooms of the Long Island home and brutally shot his mother and father, Ronald Sr. and Louise DeFeo, along with his four siblings. The man, who pleaded insanity, is still in prison today, serving a life sentence.

It’s a shame that more contemporary horror filmmakers don’t take the opportunity to use something that is already shrouded in a dark history and build on it.