“Poltergeist,” the 2015 remake of the 1982 supernatural horror classic with the same title , haunts with the same hair-rising creeps that made the original Tom Hooper/Steven Spielberg film, a cultural phenomenon but it’s utterly devoid of any inventiveness, nor of a sensibly-constructed narrative, to make itself a stand out among the string of horror movies that recently inundated the big screen.
This haunted house-horror updates the set-up of its original source material. By “update”, I mean it has literally filled the house with new gadgets (most strikingly recognizable, the flatscreen tv), and also takes CGI-generated effects to its service to deliver its dreadful scares. Now following the Bowen family, who have chosen to settle in a suburban home to mend their family’s fiscal inadequacies, this remake seems to duplicate the proceedings of the classic from which it is based.
Such attempt works with spine-creeping effects, but only for ephemeral period. It won’t take too long before perplexing illogical events start to dangle from the central narrative, and they won’t establish any connection from each other. It also doesn’t help that most of the characters don’t posses emotional depths.
There’s this baffling creepy feeling about the Bowen parents’ laconic natures, and to their children’s inexplicable behaviors, but the nonsensical turns and shifts deprive the stream of ominous events with logic and sense, rendering the entire proceeding vapid and forgettable. The ever imminent horror tactics work, but eventually pales in the wake of an inevitably distracting narrative incoherence.
For all its frightening thrills and chills alone, “Poltergeist” is undoubtedly a cinematic success, able to creep audience out and make them stick at the edge-of-their-seats. The effort to update the setting to contemporary feel, somewhat feels needlessly exaggerated, but nonetheless helps in magnifying the amount of scares to claustrophobic levels.
This is where the movie it at its best. But at its worst is the feeling of its unnecessary-ness, a film bearing the same old overly familiar creeps of its predecessor but losing them swiftly as the end credits begin rolling.
RATING: 6/10 (JE)
