by Ed Travis
The new Poltergeist remake is arriving this weekend to a crowded box office and with little to no fanfare or marketing power behind it. This is a genuine conundrum. On the one hand, you’ve got a widely beloved event film franchise which is clearly being mined for further hopeful entries for a new generation. The money has already been spent and the movie is ready to be unleashed onto a new audience. And the movie is pretty solid, all told. On the other hand, then, it is curious why this “better than most” horror reboot is being released during the summer season and more or less being buried. This could just be my take on things. Perhaps the marketing budget on Poltergeist ’15 was actually substantial and I’m just not their target demo so I saw almost none of their campaign? And maybe my whole line of thinking here will be demolished by the time Sunday rolls around and we see the box office results and it turns out the Poltergeist brand is alive and well and coming to a Native American burial ground near you for a Summer 2016 sequel.
I tend not to discuss box office in my film reviews because, frankly, the box office side of things has nothing to do with an analyzation of the actual quality and themes and artistry of a film. But we live in a remake-obsessed age for better or for worse, and while a remake isn’t inherently a good or a bad thing (as much as critic-types often decry our current state), it is a studio thought process that is inarguably driven by money. Any “known property” is fair game at this point because, the thinking goes, there is a built in fanbase and an immediate familiarity with the property. And this is where the business side collides with the film itself and forces me to bring this up in a review.
Poltergeist ’15 is a fairly harmless family/horror film which kept me attentive throughout and which hews remarkably closely to the original film. Whole characters, sequences, and story arcs actually remain largely unchanged from the first movie. I wanted to make a joke about how Sam Rockwell is no Craig T. Nelson… but it turns out Sam Rockwell is his typical great self here, and is perhaps more front and center as the Eric Bowen than Nelson was in the original. But this is where many of the problems lie with the new film as well. After having revisited the original just this week with the Cinapse Two Cents crew, I can’t help but appreciate the strong and simple narrative throughlines of the original film which, in an effort to update for a new audience, the new film complicates and dilutes. JoBeth Williams’ Diane Freeling was the clear main character of that original film and her unerring love and determination to retrieve little Carol Anne from the supernatural realm was the beating heart that gave that film all of its power. The Freeling family feels well fleshed out and we care about them all, but it’s all in service to building up that core bond Diane has with the family. Here in 2015 there’s a major focus on the young son Griffin Bowen (Kyle Catlett) and his bond with his spiritually abducted sister. But that leaves the Rosemarie DeWitt mother character diluted and the whole emotional impact is spread too thin to pack a punch.
But the film does largely succeed when sticking to the tone and heart of the original film. The Bowen family feels natural; they’re just like any middle class suburban white folks in 2015. And the scare sequences, including gags with toy clowns, the creepy tree outside the window, as well as entities in the TV, gave me goosebumps on occasion. But it is with all the knowing 2015 updates that the film feels forced and inauthentic and the machinations of the studio remake system rear their ugly, money grubbing heads. Sure, I guess all families have smart phones and tablets now, but these devices are SO front and center here, complete with attempted scare gags to go along with them. And when they start using a toy drone to explore the spiritual realm and the climax goes mega-CGI, you can practically hear the studio exec saying something like “kids love drones… we need a drone!”.
The intimacy and tactile nature of that first film springs to mind immediately when the stale computer graphics totally disconnect the viewer from the everyday setting of the story, which up to that point has been precisely what made any scares to be had so effective. And while I actually love Jared Harris and appreciate the choice to bring him in as a kind of exact polar opposite to Zelda Rubenstein’s iconic spiritual medium warrior Tangina, that whole subplot simply pales in comparison to the original as well.
Watching Poltergeist ’15 was fine. I experienced a little bit of dread, a few bouts of goosebumps, and I largely felt like the heart and soul of the Bowen family clicked and at least initially engaged. But the remarkable similarity to the first film is almost a distraction after a time, and the few changes made dilute from the ultimate impact and reek of studio interference or the tone-deaf pursuit of “relevance”. Perhaps Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Productions was going for a real family horror film that could actually be watched by kids, as evidenced by the hiring creative talent mostly known for kid-friendly properties such as writer David Lindsay-Abaire (Rise Of The Guardians, Robots, Oz The Great And Powerful) as well as director Gil Kenan (Monster House, City Of Ember). With those talents did come a fairly solid emotional core, but lackluster horror elements. Poltergeist 1982 is one of those magical movies made in the sweet spot before a PG-13 rating even existed. A movie where kids say bad words, parents smoke dope in their bedrooms and the movie never judges them for it, and people can tear off their own faces in a mirror… but all generations could watch! We no longer live in those magical times and I fear this new film doesn’t know what audience it is trying to appeal to at best, or at worst won’t appeal to any demographic at all. You can do a lot worse than the new Poltergeist film, but on every conceivable level you can do better by simply watching the original film again.
And I’m Out.