It’s easy to say that a remake of a classic is unnecessary, because it usually is. We can see old movies with ease now, especially those considered classic; and remaking films from the ’80s and ’90s seems even sillier, considering those remaking them have arguably been watching and re-watching them on VHS since they were kids. The films being remade now aren’t being made because the filmmaker leading the charge sees an opportunity to improve, modernize, or take another view; they are remaking movies they love in order to pay homage to them. And Poltergeist may be guiltier of this than any film of this kind in recent years.
There are certainly changes to the basics of the film, most of which aren’t improvements. One area which did hold some weight in terms of adding to the film is that the family moves to a development in a foreclosure neighborhood because father Eric Bowen lost his job. This minor change actually works, because it provides an explanation as to why they would be desperate to buy the home, never looking at its history, and become trapped. I’ll never understand the rationale, however, of making the scared nine-year-old boy, Robbie, sleep in the attic when you have a perfectly good teenager who should be further away from the family anyway – especially because she seems to watch a lot of ghost hunter shows at night. This forces poor Robbie to sleep under a skylight and find a crawlspace full of clown dolls.
Now, let’s discuss the clowns that have been popping up in advertisements for months. I don’t like clowns, and I am terrified of clown dolls (especially the ones my grandmother used to look for at flea markets and garage sales). It was the primary reason I needed a friend to take me to this movie. So I totally understand the fear this kid has about finding a room full of clown dolls. They are scary as shit. And the possessed clown doll in every Google ad for this movie makes for the scariest teaser I’ve seen. But that scene is also pretty early in the movie, and the studio leaked that sequence and played it a lot; so while I spilled my drink on my friend (sorry), I wasn’t scared for the rest of the movie.
Not being scared in a horror movie is a big, big, huge problem, and the reason we aren’t scared is because of how well we know every beat of this movie. Sure, there are minor changes, but for a person usually jumpy in these kinds of haunted house movies, I only experienced that once (that damn clown). If you’ve seen Poltergeist, you know the beats and basic story, so the suspense here is horribly lacking. But even if you haven’t seen the original film, Poltergeist has had such a big influence on other horror films that this movie feels minor compared to movies inspired by the original that are more stylized (The Conjuring), disturbing (Dark Skies) or fun (Insidious). Poltergeist, besides being a remake with name recognition, has no selling point – and because of that name, it only invites comparisons. If you are going to benefit from name recognition, the movie needs to be compared. And while the original was pretty extreme for the PG-13 rating, this film feels unbelievably tame.
But even if you weren’t comparing the films, this Poltergeist still doesn’t work for fundamental cinematic reasons. Rosemarie DeWitt is great (although I wish she didn’t always play “the wife and mother” characters). Sam Rockwell is one of the best actors out there today, and has some great moments getting to use that inherent weirdness of his in this role. But then he just goes back to being reserved and kind of boring, despite his usual tendency towards scene stealing. Jared Harris, on the other hand, just isn’t very good in a role as a ghost hunter, taking the character he played in The Quiet One (a terrible movie) and just doing this as a modern day Fright Night Peter Vincent, making him not very funny and pretty obnoxious. Jane Adams is good but underused, and the kids are okay, but not very memorable. The script is a little bland (there are no new lines that I can remember) and the house is nothing special. The movie also suffers from bland design in the other dimension. If we’re go into the third dimension, why does it look so boring? They can do anything they want here, so why make the third dimension murky and hard to see… again?
Poltergeist might be fun, but in the theater I was in, no one seemed very into the movie, which is unusual in a horror crowd. No one screamed or laughed or seemed jumpy at all, and a lot of people seemed very impatient for it to just be over. That is the problem with a movie remake: the pacing needs to be pumped up so it doesn’t bore those familiar with the original movie. This film really drags – plus, it’s never very fun or funny. The lack of levity is very evident, especially because some of the hammier things from the ’80s special effects have been replaced with digital tech that is neither scary nor fun (and often looks pretty bad, like the tree scene). This is surprising, considering Sam Rami is one of the producers, and he usually understands that horror is best when it has a close connection to comedy.
If you really love Poltergeist, I can’t imagine this movie being a lot of fun. Iff you’ve never seen the original, the movie will probably be pretty damn confusing. If you’ve seen the original, but don’t like or love Poltergeist…well, this movie is unlike to win any new converts.
Lesley Coffin is a New York transplant from the midwest. She is the New York-based writer/podcast editor for Filmoria and film contributor at The Interrobang. When not doing that, she’s writing books on classic Hollywood, including Lew Ayres: Hollywood’s Conscientious Objector and her new book Hitchcock’s Stars: Alfred Hitchcock and the Hollywood Studio System.
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