Poltergeist

In 1982, we got Poltergeist - A horror film that was vibrant, funny, suspenseful and made by filmmakers who truly wanted to tell the story they were telling and were inspired by its imagination.  In 2015, we have a remake where the filmmakers have apparently treated the movie like a brand name.  They knew they could draw in audiences with the familiar name, and they figured they didn't need to go much further than that.  It attempts to recreate the feel of the original, and despite some talented people involved both on and behind and the camera, this movie falls flat in just about every way imaginable.

This is a remake made by a corporate committee that doesn't even seem all that interested in remaking Poltergeist in the first place.  It's workmanlike in the way it rushes through the familiar and famous sequences from the original (scary clown doll, hallucinations involving a melting face, a creepy old tree), while at the same time delivering absolutely no impact upon the audience.  There is no audience for this movie, far as I can tell.  Those who have never seen the original will come expecting thrills, and end up bored.  Those who view the original as a classic of modern horror will watch with disinterest, if they choose to watch it at all.  This remake is passionless and generates no emotional response at any time.  That's what horror films are supposed to do after all, create a response from the viewer.  The great ones can create a wide variety of emotions, such as the original film did.  This update is as interesting as cardboard.

The new film dutifully follows the plot of the original, only now with unimpressive CG effects and characters written in such a slipshod manner that they feel completely off.  A typical American family moves into a suburban home after struggling through some hard times lately.  The dad (Sam Rockwell) was recently laid off, and the mom (Rosemarie DeWitt) is a struggling writer.  Naturally, the new home is haunted, and the kids are the first to experience this in different ways.  Youngest daughter Madison (Kennedi Clements) starts talking to invisible people in her closet, and has a strange fixation on the TV in the living room.  Middle son Griffin (Kyle Catlett) becomes afraid of the old tree outside his bedroom window, as well as the box of clown dolls he finds in the crawlspace in his bedroom.  Oldest daughter Kendra (Saxon Sharbino) experiences strange interference with her high-tech devices, and before long is being dragged into a puddle of black goo that has mysteriously formed in the garage.

The parents finally become concerned about all this when little Madison is pulled into her closet by the malevolent spirits and disappears, though her distorted voice can be heard through the television.  Actually, come to think of it, the parents never come across as concerned as they really should be over the fact that their child has been abducted to an alternate dimension that lies somewhere between life and death.  They seem more irritated by this fact, rather than hung up over the fact that they may never see their daughter again.  Some paranormal researchers show up, led by a guy (Jared Harris) who hosts a reality paranormal show on TV.  The researchers actually come across as being more concerned about the situation than the family does, but that doesn't mean they've been given any personalities by the undercooked screenplay.  As everyone struggles to find a way to the other dimension in order to save the girl, it all climaxes with a lot of special effects that seem dated and uninspired.

This new Poltergeist was directed by Gil Kenan, who made his debut a few years ago with Monster House, an animated film about a haunted house that manages to be much better than this.  He's going through the motions here, both when he tries to set up his scares, and in getting performances from his cast.  The script is credited to the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, David Lindsay-Abaire, whose mind was obviously on other things when he was writing this.  The dialogue he has created is so perfunctory, you wonder if it could ever have been delivered by any actor with any emotion.  The lines spoken by the cast are uninspired and have no life, not even when the movie is trying to be funny.  Maybe the cast sensed this, and that's why they seem to act like they don't care that they're supposed to be locked in a battle with a supernatural evil.

There's not a whole lot else I can say about this bland new take on Poltergeist.  It seems destined to be forgotten before the summer is over, while the original will continue to be a classic.  This is what happens when the filmmakers only care about the famous brand name of a movie, and make no effort to truly update it, or even bother to make an argument for the remake's existence.  You end up with something as bland as vanilla, and with none of the substance of the earlier film.

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