Review of Poltergeist (2015) by Juliano K — 04 Apr 2016

A few points- why does this exist exactly? Who is it for exactly? Who gave this the go-ahead exactly? Why did I waste part of my life watching it exactly? Exactly...

A miserably-dull and half-hearted (well, not even that really) re-interpretation of a true classic. Unfortunately, whilst the original captured everything that was great about the films of its decade, this one captures everything that's wrong with films today.

Firstly, there's no reason for this to exist- the original holds up as well today as it ever did. Secondly, this seems to be attempting to be a legitimate horror film and yet it still retains much of the wacky nature of the original (but without ever actually managing to be funny). That leaves me wondering who this is even supposed to appeal to? The original Poltergeist is one of the few classics, like Evil Dead 2, that manages to tow the line between horror and madcap comedy. Further, there is something legitimately family-friendly about the original that this one seems to complete throw aside with its whole appeal essentially being its creepy doll (the doll is creepy, I'll give them that).

There's stupid jump scares, terrible CGI (the original, hilariously, has better special effects despite the huge time difference between the releases) , the characters are all unrelentingly dull versions of their original portrayals, and there really just isn't much good to talk about here.

There's a few changes to the original story but none are improvements and the movie's clumsy attempts to find its tone means that even the original plot points that remain don't really work well here (the ancient burial ground plot point is face-palm worthy here, whereas it works perfectly fine in the original).

The film gets progressively worse and it doesn't even start off as even remotely good. The toy clown looks cool and the film is well-shot, with some very cool lighting effects that are almost marginally creepy at times but everything else is a disaster.

I'd give it 30% as a stand-alone film but as it is such an insult to its source material it doesn't even deserve that. There is one good thing about this film- it might convince people to watch the original for comparative purposes and, wow, the original is brilliant. This? Not even decent.