After years of trying to set up a found footage installment in The Amityville Horror series called The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes, Dimension Films finally decided to scrap the project and reboot the series all over again. The new film is called Amityville: The Awakening and this time around they are switching things up by eliminating the father figure from the family unit altogether; instead, Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the single mother of three children who are moving into a new house. Her son James (Cameron Monaghan) is very ill and bed-ridden and apparently the house starts to manifest its malevolent force through him.

Based on this trailer, it almost seems like they’ve turned Amityville into an exorcism / possession film, and it seems a bit weird that most of the scares don’t seem to come from the house itself. Apparently they feel that modern audiences need something more concrete to latch onto. Like almost every horror movie being released nowadays, this one is produced by Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, Sinister) but the fact that it is being directed by Franck Khalfoun (Maniac) has me somewhat curious to check it out. Amityville: The Awakening hits theatres on Jan. 2nd; check out the trailer after the jump and see what you think.