Review of Poltergeist (2015) by Ben T — 02 Nov 2015

The movie Poltergeist directed by Gil Kenan is an American horror movie, despite it's rating of PG 13. In the movie, the family moves to a new house and almost instantly observes things out of the ordinary. Eventually the youngest child, Maddie disappears and it becomes the family's mission to find her, and retrieve her.

Griffin, the middle child, has a frightened personality and is easily scared, so once he notices a baseball rolling to Maddie's closet and cards being stacked, he wants to leave. Before the family knows it, Madeline is sucked into her own closet and disappeared. The family then seeks help from these people that have dealt with familiar cases before, hoping they can understand what happened to their daughter. They explain to them that Madeline is in a state of half life, where she is here, but at the same time not with them. Griffin then suggests that somebody then needs to go and retrieve her from this state, and from there the climax begins.

The movie contained a truly unique and original story that other cinemas fail dramatically at. However, with the film in the horror genre, many viewers didn't seem to be scared by the actual plot of the story, but rather the variety of jump scares in the beginning when they first move in. The family also lacked bondaged that could've easily been replaced with some of the more unnecessary scenes that didn't contribute to the plot. The older sister was also useless and didn't share the characterization that Griffin and Madeline had. On the other hand, the climax was unpredictable, thrilling, and original to watch and left me satisfied in the end.

In conclusion, if you don't give a crap about characters and flaws in the story, then Poltergeist won't fail to scare you out of your mind.