Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt co-star in Fox's reboot of the ‘80s haunted-house classic.
By Justin Lowe
It’s
infrequent and particularly satisfying when the remake of an especially
memorable film equals or exceeds the experience of the original. In
1982, Poltergeist saw the brilliant pairing of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s
low-budget horror director Tobe Hooper with far more mainstream
screenwriter and producer Steven Spielberg for an effects-laden event
movie that earned its place as a contemporary benchmark among
supernatural thrillers.
Leaving behind the youth-skewing perspectives of Monster House and City of Ember, director Gil Kenan not only delivers on the promise of Hooper’s Poltergeist,
but significantly raises the stakes for similar PG-13 fare. With strong
brand identity and two generations of moviegoers to cultivate, Fox’s
Memorial Day weekend release should help boost the summer box office to a
promising start with a solid opening weekend, although prospects for
franchise building (the original was followed by two sequels) look
somewhat mixed.
In
setting the scene, Kenan and the filmmakers take their cue from the
first film in the trilogy, as Eric (Sam Rockwell) and Amy (Rosemarie
DeWitt) Bowen, crippled by the financial impacts of the Great Recession,
look to downsize so that they can continue adequately providing for
their three kids. They find what they’re looking for in a distressed but
affordable home for sale that’s located in a nondescript development
full of vacant properties on the outskirts of an Illinois town where Amy
attended university. Youngest daughter Maddy (Kennedi Clements) is
excited to move in following the initial tour after conversing with some
new invisible friends who speak to her from a mysterious bedroom
closet. Anxiety-prone middle child Griffin (Kyle Catlett) isn’t thrilled
to be settling into an attic bedroom, however, where an ominous willow
tree looms over the house through a rooftop skylight. Teenage Kendra
(Saxon Sharbino) displays visible disaffection with her new situation,
preferring to remain in touch with her old life and friends via phone,
text and video chat.
On
the first night in their new home while everyone else is asleep,
Griffin discovers Maddy talking to the big-screen living room TV as it
flashes and emits strange noises. “They’re here,” she says, referring to
her friends, “the lost people.” Now Griffin has some solid reasons to
feel worried, especially after noticing objects moving around the house
of their own accord and discovering a box full of scary clown dolls
stashed in a storage space. His parents just attribute these
trepidations to his chronic anxiety and it isn’t until the next night
when they’re out to dinner at a neighbor’s house that they discover some
disturbing information regarding their new home that sends them rushing
back to check on the kids.
By
the time they arrive, Griffin and Kendra have suffered supernatural
attacks and Maddy has vanished completely. At their wit’s end, Amy and
Eric decide to seek guidance from Dr. Claire Powell (Jane Adams) from
the Department of Paranormal Research at Amy’s former university. Powell
agrees to assist, bringing in her staff to wire the Bowen’s home with
video cameras and monitoring equipment in their search for the missing
child. They soon determine that Maddy is able to speak to them through
the TV set, but can’t provide any clues to her whereabouts. Powell
concludes that the house is under the influence of a malevolent
poltergeist that has abducted Maddy, holding her in a shadowy,
in-between realm that they will have to access in order to rescue her
before she disappears completely.
As
the film reaches its midpoint, all of the essential elements of the
original are in place and in part this satisfying continuity is
attributable to a screen story again written by Spielberg. In scripting
the remake, David Lindsay-Abaire hews closely to the earlier template,
replicating some key scenes with more contemporary flair while
ratcheting up the pacing by cutting 20 minutes off the running time.
Updating the spiritual medium character with hardbitten reality TV host
Carrigan Burke (Jared Harris), an Indiana Jones-style ghostbuster,
provides a recognizable pop-culture reference, blowing away the musty
cobwebs of stereotypically aloof psychics.
Although
Rockwell appears capable of holding the Bowens together in the face of
financial and personal peril, it’s a rather under-written part that
lacks the frequent character tics he’s exploited more memorably in
smaller-scale films. DeWitt is the predictably supportive emotional core
of the family, eventually driven to extremes by her daughter’s
predicament. In a substantial role for a young actor, Catlett favorably
impresses with his comprehensive grasp of Griffin’s neuroses and his
determination to face them head-on in several pivotal scenes.
The
integration of notably naturalistic visual effects with the digital
filmmaking is frequently almost seamless, until the plot shifts into an
entirely supernatural realm during the final attempt to retrieve Maddy.
Kenan’s overall improvements to the movie’s visual style aren’t only
attributable to advances in technology and a 3D update, however. While
Hooper favored shock value and jump scares, Kenan and cinematographer
Javier Aguirresarobe construct far more fluid sequences as the camera
glides and hovers over its subjects, reserving the most impactful shots
for the climactic scenes, particularly a concluding sequence that’s
particularly thrilling.
Poltergeist, rated PG-13, opens this Friday.
Watch the trailer for the original ‘Poltergeist’:
No comments:
Post a Comment