Reviews: Amityville: It's About Time (1992) Movie Review / Ending Explained / FAQs
- Related: [ Movie Details for Amityville: It's About Time ]
Subgenres: Haunted House, Haunted House - Cursed, Madness
Exploring Amityville: It's About Time (1992) through our review, we cover its story, scares, and how it fits into the broader horror genre landscape.
Amityville Horror: It’s About Time (1992) – Time-Twisting Terror from the House of Horror
Amityville Horror: It’s About Time (1992) takes the long-running haunted house franchise into strange new territory—time-manipulating demonic horror. Directed by Tony Randel, this sixth entry in the Amityville saga abandons the original house setting in favor of a cursed object—a sinister antique clock—that brings the evil into suburbia with devastating results.
With its blend of surreal temporal distortion, grotesque imagery, and apocalyptic symbolism, It’s About Time stands as one of the more ambitious and weirdly entertaining installments in the franchise. It’s not without flaws, but for horror fans who love cursed artifacts and twisted timelines, this one delivers a chaotic ride worth revisiting.
Plot, Themes, and Character Development
The story centers on Jacob Sterling, a successful architect who brings home an ornate antique clock recovered from a demolished house in Amityville. What he doesn’t realize is that the clock is a vessel of evil, tainted by the demonic forces from the original haunted home. Once placed on his mantel, time begins to warp, reality fractures, and horrific hallucinations bleed into the real world.
Jacob’s children, Lisa and Rusty, along with his ex-girlfriend Andrea, quickly become entangled in a series of escalating supernatural events. Jacob becomes increasingly erratic and violent, showing signs of possession, while time begins to loop, accelerate, and collapse, causing reality itself to unravel.
Key Themes Explored:
Time as a supernatural weapon
Demonic possession through cursed objects
Fractured families and generational trauma
Perception vs. reality in a haunted environment
Inevitability of evil when it’s unchecked
Rusty plays the reluctant hero, sensing the danger before anyone else and ultimately seeking the truth about the clock’s origins. Andrea serves as the moral compass and final girl figure, attempting to hold the family together as their world disintegrates. While character depth is light, the film focuses more on momentum and atmosphere than emotional arcs.
Cinematography, Atmosphere, and Supernatural Effects
For a direct-to-video release, It’s About Time boasts surprisingly inventive direction and atmospheric visuals. The use of distorted clocks, eerie lighting, and shifting environments contributes to a dreamlike tone. The cinematography employs shadowy hallways, warped reflections, and flickering lights to reflect time slipping away.
The film also leans into practical effects, with grotesque creature makeup, body horror elements, and skin-crawling hallucinations. As time unravels, scenes replay with subtle changes, creating a disorienting effect that adds to the creeping dread.
Directing Style, Strengths, and Weaknesses
Tony Randel, best known for Hellbound: Hellraiser II, brings a visceral energy and cosmic horror vibe to this installment. While the Amityville series often suffers from repetition, this entry dares to be different by focusing on temporal horror, making the clock a metaphor for inescapable corruption and entropy.
However, the film suffers from occasional cheesy dialogue, some flat performances, and pacing issues in the second act. The ambitious concept isn’t always matched by budget or narrative cohesion, but it earns points for creativity within a tired franchise.
Strengths:
Original concept involving time as a source of horror
Creepy practical effects and atmospheric visuals
Genuinely unsettling moments of time distortion and déjà vu
Strong third act payoff with a surreal climax
Daring to break away from the haunted house formula
Weaknesses:
Low-budget limitations in visual polish and acting
Some underdeveloped character dynamics
Slow pacing in the middle act
Clunky exposition around the clock’s origin
Missed opportunity for deeper time-travel lore
Final Verdict & Score: 6/10
Amityville Horror: It’s About Time is a bold and bizarre installment in a franchise that often treads familiar ground. With its time-bending twist, demonic possession, and Lovecraftian dread, this movie dares to do something different. It doesn’t always stick the landing, but it delivers enough originality and eerie moments to be a standout in the series.
This is the kind of film that plays like a midnight cable horror classic—flawed, fun, and packed with creative mayhem.
Who will enjoy it:
Fans of ‘90s direct-to-video horror with bold concepts
Viewers who enjoy time distortion and psychological horror
Cult horror fans of Hellraiser-style surrealism
Who might be disappointed:
Audiences seeking polished effects or grounded realism
Viewers unfamiliar with the Amityville mythos
Fans expecting traditional haunted house tropes
Amityville Horror: It’s About Time (1992) – Most Searched FAQs Answered and Ending Explained
Is Amityville: It’s About Time connected to the original Amityville Horror?
Yes, but not directly. It’s About Time exists within the same franchise universe and references the evil legacy of the original Amityville house, but instead of taking place in the infamous Long Island location, it moves the horror to a suburban neighborhood. The connection comes through a cursed antique clock salvaged from the Amityville home, which serves as the new vessel for supernatural chaos.
What is the cursed clock in Amityville: It’s About Time?
The antique clock is a demonic artifact that was once inside the original Amityville house. Its presence brings malevolent energy and time distortion to any home it resides in. Once installed, it anchors itself to the wall and begins to manipulate time, reality, and the people around it—causing hallucinations, aging, repetition, and ultimately, violent possession.
How does time manipulation work in this movie?
The clock doesn’t just keep time—it rewrites it. It creates loops, skips, and distortions in the timeline, trapping characters in repeated or altered moments. Some characters experience visions of alternate realities, accelerated aging, or seemingly teleport through space. Time becomes unreliable and weaponized, adding a unique sci-fi horror twist to the haunted object subgenre.
Who becomes possessed in Amityville: It’s About Time?
Jacob Sterling, the architect who brings the clock home, is the primary target of the demonic possession. His personality begins to shift—he becomes paranoid, erratic, and violent. As the clock exerts more control over the house, it also influences his daughter Lisa and causes severe psychological and physical effects on everyone nearby.
What role does Andrea play in the story?
Andrea, Jacob’s ex-girlfriend and live-in physical therapist, becomes the central protagonist and “final girl” of the movie. She’s the first to suspect that the clock is more than just an antique and eventually unravels the truth about its origins. Andrea fights to protect Lisa and Rusty, uncovering the connection between the object and the Amityville curse.
Is there time travel in the movie?
While not traditional time travel, the film does depict chronological shifts and alternate timelines caused by the clock’s influence. In the final act, time seems to reverse itself, giving Andrea a second chance to confront the evil before the entire timeline collapses. This narrative device allows the film to end in a temporal reset that offers resolution—but leaves a lingering threat.
How does this film stand out in the Amityville series?
It’s About Time is unique for its focus on time-based horror rather than traditional ghost or demon scares. It’s one of the few entries to successfully experiment with the franchise’s formula, moving away from haunted houses and into haunted objects with multidimensional powers. The creative premise has earned it cult favorite status among horror fans.
Amityville Horror: It’s About Time (1992) – Ending Explained
Major Spoilers Below
In the climax, Andrea confronts the full power of the cursed clock as the household descends into chaos. Jacob, fully possessed, turns on his family. Rusty is attacked, and Lisa nearly succumbs to the evil influence as well. Andrea, having pieced together the truth, smashes the clock—but instead of ending the terror, time is reset.
Suddenly, Andrea finds herself back at the moment Jacob first brought the clock home—before anything happened. This time, she refuses to allow the clock inside, warning Jacob about the danger. He reluctantly agrees to discard it, and the clock is left behind.
But the film ends with an ominous final shot: the clock, still intact, found by a curious neighbor, hinting that the curse continues and the evil will find another way to infect the world.
Key Takeaways:
Time resets, giving Andrea a second chance to stop the possession.
Jacob is saved, but only through Andrea’s intervention.
The clock remains intact, and the evil is not truly defeated.
The final scene suggests a cycle of corruption, where the object will strike again.
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Sources Used to Shape This Review
Insights in this review are drawn from director interviews, fan commentary, production notes, and long-form breakdowns across genre-specific platforms. Content is written uniquely and reviewed for accuracy.
- Amityville: It's About Time Rating Scores
- Our Score: 6/10
- Overall Score: 5.09/10
- IMDB: 4.7/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 4.5/10
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