Poltergeist remake is a mere ghost of the original

THE original 1982 Poltergeist is about a little girl abducted by spirits lurking inside the family TV.

less than 2 min read

May 24, 2015 - 12:00AM

The Sunday Telegraph

THE original 1982 Poltergeist is about a little girl abducted by spirits lurking inside the family TV.

In 2015, TVs are a lot bigger — eek — and nobody can tear themselves away from screens, be they computers, tablets or mobile phones.

The shadow world has never been more alluring.

The US of today also has plenty of empty houses, the result of mass foreclosures after the fiscal crisis of last decade. It’s the reason given by the estate agent in this version of Poltergeist on why a large family home is going cheap.

Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt from the horror remake of Poltergeist. Picture: Fox films

Even if it wasn’t built on a graveyard, the place would still contain the angry ghosts of the evicted.

So that’s two reasons to remake a horror classic.

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Another is the appeal of the original’s hair-raising tricks: the tree that comes to life to terrorise a sleepless child; scary toys that move around a room in the dark; the wardrobe that devours.

But it’s the brave filmmaker who dares to try out-Spielberg Spielberg.

(Tube Hooper directed in 1982, but Steven Spielberg was one of the writers and is widely accepted as having co-directed.) Gil Kenan (Monster House) gives it a red-hot go.

To his credit is the casting.

Scene from the 2015 horror remake of Poltergeist.

The talented Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt are the parents; and boy actor Kyle Catlett gives off a hint of I-see-dead-people when he’s doing abject terror.

But there’s a lack of seriousness here. It’s a shallower version, impatient to get to the scary stuff, unconcerned with building characters or credibility.

Once little Maddison (Kennedi Clements) disappears, the family are too quick to decide that their place is haunted, and all too soon the paranormal specialists (Jane Adams and Jared Harris) are on the scene.

Now showing.