Review of Poltergeist (2015) by Hannover F — 12 Sep 2015

I'll be honest. I didn't really have high hopes going into this one. I saw the original Poltergeist when it came out and even by today's standards, it still holds up very well in both special effects and story.

Being made by Sam Raimi's production studio, Ghost House Pictures did give me some confidence though. I was fairly sure that the guy who directed Evil Dead and Drag me to Hell would't let someone ruin one of my favorite classic horror movies.

Would he? Sam, buddy? Fairly early on, I started to realize I may be wrong. I became instantly annoyed at the fact (Minor spoiler ahead) that in the start of the film the family is looking at buying the haunted house in question when the father tells the real estate agent that he does not have a job.

A conversation with with the mother shortly after reveals that she also has no job and is a stay at home mom. Follow this up with him trying to make a purchase at the local hardware store where 2 of his 3 credit cards get declined and you start to wonder how these people were even able to buy a house in the first place! Shortly after I became annoyed with the quivering shell of a boy who played the middle child and is frightened of a tree in the front yard that really isn't scary at all.

As a matter of fact, he's pretty much a sniveling annoyance through most of the movie. The son in the original had a fear of the thunder but was otherwise a normal, likable kid. I was kind of hoping he would get taken out early in this one.

No such luck. And don't get me started about the remade tree scene. In fact, none of the actors were very memorable. the youngest girl, Maddie, who takes the place of Carol Anne didn't bring anything interesting to her part and was mostly flat through the whole thing.

They didn't try to recreate every momentous moment from the original, which is good, I guess. However by the end, I found myself wishing they had at least tried. The problem is, the scenes they didn't try to re-imagine were not replaced with something equally scary or shocking.

Or interesting. They simply weren't there leaving you wondering why they would bother to make such a watered down version of the original. Normally I would think the idea would be to go bigger and better, not chop out a bunch of stuff, throw in come weak CGI and call it a re-imagining.

The originals tiny yet creepy southern psychic, Tangina is replaced with a hack television ghost chaser who's trying to redeem himself by banishing some real ghosts. *yawn*. Sorry, just telling the tale of this movie is boring me.

The finale's pales in comparison to the original and is barely suspenseful, much less scary at all. Fans of the original will find themselves thinking 'that's it?" when all is said and done.

I was skeptical going into this movie and apparently for good reason. If you really want to try and scare yourself, go and watch the original on Netflix. It's way better and even the special effects hold up for the most part.

I think you'll like it a lot better even if some aspects seem a little outdated (fashion, hairstyles, etc) Plus who wouldn't want to see Craig T. Nelson get chased around by ghosts? But as for this movie.

One star, two thumbs down and a big raspberry to Ghost House for letting this travesty happen.