Review: Poltergeist remake fails to deliver

• 13 hours ago May 27, 2015 10:01PM

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Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt In 'Poltergeist' First Trailer

Poltergeist (M)

Director: Gil Kenan (Monster House)
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Saxon Sharbino, Kennedi Clements, Jared Harris.
Rating: **1/2
Taking fright with the familiar
With Poltergeist, it all comes down to what you are more afraid of: things that go bump in the night, or remakes that might go kerplunk at any moment.
If you were alive in the 1980s, then no doubt you are aware of the original Poltergeist.

Horror remake ... Rosemarie DeWitt as Amy Bowen in Poltergeist.. Source: AP

It was a blockbuster spooker of its time, a strange, stridently haunting flick with enough paranormal activity to power about 10 Paranormal Activity movies.
That first Poltergeist had a certain cinematic pedigree going for it as well. Steven Spielberg penned the story, and filmmaker Tobe Hooper (of Texas Chainsaw Massacre) brought the frights.

Watch out ... Nicholas Braun has a terrifying encounter with a poltergeist residing inside a bedroom wardobe. Source: AP

Now, three decades later, Hollywood is hitting us with a generic second serving of this once-disturbing dish.
While the recipe remains more or the less the same, fresh ingredients are scarce, and the flavour is on the bland side.
This is not to knock lead actors Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt, who are their usual, unfailingly credible selves as the married couple who buy the wrong house at the right time for a haunting.

They’re back ... the Poltergeist remake features stunning special effects. Source: Supplied

Rockwell and DeWitt share an easygoing chemistry that can often make you forget the film is coasting along on autopilot. It would be great to see them together again in other, better circumstances.
The young actors who play their three children (a little girl destined to be lost to ‘the other side’, a middle-kid son who serves no apparent plotting purpose, and the obligatory surly elder sister) don’t really cut it by comparison.
Where the remake does surpass the original is in the special-effects realm. Director Gil Kenan assembles two very strong sequences (including a well-thought-out riff on the old film’s climactic rescue) that saves his movie from total oblivion.
However, the jury will remain out for some time on the new Poltergeist’s choice of spirit medium (a famous and crucial character in the original). Fans with long memories will shake their heads in disdain.