How do you get away with writing a mediocre movie and make a lot of money off of it? You slap a franchise name on it. I might be just a little bit too biased to review Poltergeist, but remaking this film was completely unnecessary. It's like remaking Jaws. I'm sure it will be remade in the next ten years, but the movie is already so perfect, there's no need to update it. But, it WILL happen. The remake of Poltergeist forgot everything that made the original one of the best horror movies ever made. It's like if they actually did remake Jaws, but got rid of the music, the shark looked cheaply computer-rendered, and they showed it immediately leading up to no reveal whatsoever. While the finished product is more or less unscary, it isn't a total mess. There are still a few bright spots, but can't, unfortunately, save this unimpressive reboot.
Due to the recent influx of haunted house movies with Insidious and The Conjuring, remaking Poltergeist for a modern day audience didn't seem like the worst idea ever. However, with a highly respected horror film from the 80s, it comes with some directorial responsibilities. Director Gil Kenan showed he had some chops for making a family-horror film with the wildly underrated Monster House, but Poltergeist may have just been a little bit too beloved and original to be remade today. Most of the haunted house PG-13 horror faire have been tiny offshoots of the original Poltergeist and the one that has succeeded the best is the first Insidious. A child is essentially "kidnapped" by other worldly ghosts and taken to a new dimension of sorts. The family has to go into this other world in order to save him and return him to this world. They call in an older female medium in order to contact the child and find out exactly how to rescue him. This is, fundamentally, the plot of the original Poltergeist... with it's own modern (and very creepy) spin on it. What made Insidious so good and scary is that it took this structure and slowly built up the rules and mythology. Then, once we hit the other world, or "The Further", it's not filled with poorly rendered CGI demons, but actors covered in dark and terrifying make-up to provide a terrifying experience for horror lovers. This is where our remake of Poltergeist fails.
So, in this reboot, we have our nuclear family-- father (Sam Rockwell), mother (Rosemarie DeWitt), eldest daughter, young son, and youngest daughter, Maddy. Due to serious financial hardship, the family must move into a new house on a budget. Immediately, Maddy is drawn to voices coming from her closet that have become her "friends" (Hollywood, the ghost friend of the little girl trope is getting seriously old). Eventually, the "friends" start making weird things happen around the house. Lights and TVs turn on and off. Clown dolls move around bedrooms, Floorboards move and a mud-like tar substance comes pouring through. Until finally, the spirits capture Maddy and take her to their other world. Mommy and daddy contact a paranormal research team and famous medium Carrigan Burke (Jared Harris) in order to rescue Maddy.
This pretty much follows the plot of the original film, but without any of the pacing and build up scares. To me, the most frightening scene in the original film involves a storm and an old tree near the young boy's window. In the scene, the boy is afraid of the impending storm and startled by each bolt of lightning outside of his window followed by the rumble of thunder. This is before anything ghostly has happened as of yet. His father tells him to count the number of seconds between thunder and lightning. If the number gets larger each time, then the storm is moving away. The first time he does this he counts one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand. Next time he gets up to four, then five. The second time this happens he counts and gets to three. Then two. Then one. And the terror reaches its pinnacle... because we have no idea what is going to happen. It's just a storm moving closer in a ghost story... how are the two going to come together to produce a terrifying moment? Well, we know now, that the tree crashes through the window and snags the boy out of bed, taking him outside. It's horrifying. In the remake, the tree, in the wind, bats at the window a few times... then crashes through the window... it's branches cheesily head down the stairs and snag the boy from a completely different room. It's anti-climactic and scare-free.
Another good example is the clown from the first film. This is what most people remember about the original. And rightly so. The clown is terrifying, which makes sense that this reboot would use it for most of its marketing. In the original, the clown just lingers around for the ENTIRE movie. It does nothing. You keep waiting for it to do something, but it does nothing. It just sits in the chair.
The family goes through Hell to get little Carol Anne back and when the finally do... you've pretty much forgotten all about the looming clown and figure if it was going to do something, it would've done it already. Then, when everything seems like it's about to end, the clown comes to life and makes a horrifying appearance:
He even appears under the kid's bed! So, it takes the scary clown trope, pair it with the something is under the bed trope, at a time when the viewer had given up on the clown's appearance! It's perfect. This time around... the clown shows up during the initial scares (about thirty minutes in), leaps off a mantle at the kid aaaaaaaand... that's about it. There's no clown resurgence. There's no build up. There's nothing. It's a decent call-back to the original, but it never pays off. It feels pretty lazy.
There's a bunch of little things along the way that kill the terror for me, as well. There's no half-built swimming pool that winds up getting filled with rainy mud and skeletons. There's no paranormal researcher tearing the skin off his face in the mirror only to find out he's being screwed with by the ghosts and nothing actually happened. There's no big glowy demon monster:
The last bit that kind of got me a little bit, is that the medium in the original film was that creepy little old lady who had to guide little Carol Anne through the other world and keep her from "going into the light". She was a necessary character in the film and a key to the survival of the little girl. In this one, he does nothing. He's there to explain what's going on, but the little girl just naturally assumes NOT to go into the light. She's six and surrounded by a swirling pool of evil ghosts and makes the conscious decision that the light at the end of the tunnel is probably a worse idea. His character made little sense. The only thing he contributes is a giant rope he brings in his bag... that's about it.
The strengths of the movie come with the casting. Sam Rockwell is such a wildly watchable actor. He's a guy that pretty much anyone would want to be friends with. His exchanges with his kids and his wife are the best of the movie. He's able to add humor to the movie when it's needed and deep hurt and emotion when it's necessary. Also, the kids are quite impressive for young actors, as well. They're a very fun family to watch bad shit happen to them. For all of its faults, the film does have a great personality.
It may be my bias towards the original, but had this movie stood alone on its own, I still don't think I would find it that impressive. I have high regard for Sam Rockwell and the rest of the cast, but there's really nothing more beyond that brought to the table. It's mostly a let down. If you're going to remake a classic, make sure you're able to add something profound and fun to the equation, don't just lazily regurgitate what's already happened before. We're about to be on our fifth Mission: Impossible movie. Each film could stand alone on its own because there is legitimately ZERO connection now to the old TV show... but they know the "name" is what brings in the money. At least in that franchise, they're able to up the stakes and live a little bit more creatively the the previous entry. Poltergeist forgets to do this entirely.
C-
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