Movie Review: 'Poltergeist'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- "They're he-e-e-e-re!"
That was the spooky line of dialogue that emerged and took hold on the pop culture landscape when the supernatural horror thriller Poltergeist was released in 1982, to be followed over the next few years by two sequels.
"They're ba-a-a-a-ck," thus spoke the first sequel.
And now, it's he-e-e-e-re. A redo, that is.
We now get an updated remake of the feature originally co-written and produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper.
Poltergeist is a haunted-house chiller about a contemporary nuclear family that's really an abducted-child thriller.
This is a revisionist take on the material as a family struggling to make ends meet downsizes by relocating to an outdated suburban development in Illinois that's characterized by vacated foreclosures.
Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt play a married couple who lose their youngest daughter into a ghostly dimension in their suburban home, which has been invaded by angry spirits, necessitating their desperate struggle to free their child from the clutches of this malevolent supernatural force.
Among those paranormal investigators they desperately turn to are a university professor/parapsychologist (Jane Adams) and a reality TV host/ghostbuster (Jared Harris), both of whom figure in the outcome.
The choice of director Gil Kenan, whose previous films (Monster House and City of Ember) could easily be described as child-friendly, tells you that he, producer Sam Raimi, and screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire are less intent on producing scares -– although, make no mistake, there are a few jolts -- and more interested in attracting a multi-generational audience.
Even though the original was rated PG and the new version is PG-13, the more family-friendly remake skews younger.
But Kenan might be a bit too hasty in getting to the effects-driven scary stretch. That is, before we've even settled into our seats, just about as soon as the film has established that this is indeed an ordinary family moving into a new house -– a premise that always seems to get our momentary attention but that we've seen a few too many times -- creepy-crawly-unnervy things start happenings at the house.
Let's face it: no one in his or her right mind would stay. But, of course, they do.
And while the film can't be accused of overstaying its welcome, it seems in a hurry to just be done with it and vacate the premises -– something the characters should have done an hour ago.
As for the level of dread and the urgency of what's at stake, they don't register as strongly as the makers intend and we hope.
And the culprit is explicitness. That is, the more we see, the less we scare. Or care. If ever a movie demonstrated that it's what you don't see that truly terrifies, this is it.
Consequently, instead of the terror quotient heightening as things proceed, it dips.
Director Kenan does a creditable job with the young members of the cast, as teen Saxon Sharbino, middle child Kyle Catlett, and six-year-old Kennedi Clements are perfectly natural as the kids.
But the usually reliable Rockwell and DeWitt, sharing blame with their director, don't add as much to the dramatic stew as we expect them to.
Kenan's intention is to honor the original without being slavishly imitative about it. This is, in other words, no carbon copy of its predecessor.
But it's close, with pretty much the same strengths and limitations of the first film.
So we'll move into 2 stars out of 4 for this not-quite-regrettable but certainly resistible Poltergeist, a reimagined reboot with too much show and not enough tell.
