Poltergeist review: The only thing scary is that they made such a mess of this remake

By Aditya Kundalkar Horror movies have a way of tapping into your biggest fears. Shadows. Clowns. Flickering TV screens. But here’s a helpful spoiler alert: You can watch all the scariest bits of the new Poltergeist on YouTube. You don’t need a review to ruin Poltergeist for you. The filmmakers have done it themselves. And it wouldn’t hurt as much if their names weren’t producer Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Oz the Great and Powerful), director Gil Kenan (Monster House) and David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole, Inkheart). Individually, they’ve done some good work, but the team effort hasn’t quite worked. [caption id=“attachment_2259282” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  WikiMedia Commons[/caption] Even if the story isn’t new, the real joy – or in this case, the real horror – lies in the telling. Every good yarn has to have a build-up that eventually leads to the big reveal, even if it is a remake of a story that everyone already knows. The trouble with this new Poltergeist is that the big reveal comes too soon, much before the halfway mark. Where’s the slow burn? Why didn’t you let me even try to figure it out by myself first? And now what’s the point of the rest of the film? It’s just a light-and-sound show that says, “Look at what my CGI team can do!” Sure the special effects are slicker than the original and suitably terrifying. For instance, gone is the 21-inch CRT television set, replaced by a big, hi-definition flat screen. Not only does this mean more PPI (pixels-per-inch) but also more PPI (palms-per-inch).

Other modern trappings like iPhones and drones become carriers and deliverers of clingy, spooky stuff. But somehow, it’s all far less horrific than the melted-cheese-and-ketchup variety of special FX in the 1982 original. So while in 2015 we get a deftly woven, undulating, wall-to-wall corpse carpet (#win), we only get a few seconds of black, maggoty vomit (#fail). Considering the quantity and the quality of gore that’s become par for the course these days, #WhatAreYouAfraidOf Mr Filmmakers? There are parts of the film that made us feel they should have just gone and made a spoof. As it is, the ghost hunter’s reality show hashtag (#thishouseisclean) feels more like a comical parody of this iconic moment than a modern-day update of that classic line. Or maybe we’ve come to expect only spoofs because of Ace Ventura, Family Guy, and this French flick. Through it all, we were glad that Poltergeist 2015 is a whole 20 minutes shorter than the original. In hindsight, though, maybe they should have kept those 20 minutes and spent them doing what the original does so well: build up not only the tension, but also each character so that we feel something for them. For instance, in 1982, the little girl has a bird that dies. She stops her mother from flushing it down the toilet and insists on giving the dead bird a proper burial, which ties in nicely with the whole cemetery theme. In 2015, all we know is she has a favourite stuffed toy, prefers pizza for breakfast, and echoes her siblings’ choicest insults. What does she feel about birds and animals? And does she notice the dead flowers in the lawn? It’s the same for the little boy. In 1982, we saw his roller skates, Star Wars bedspread and Chewbacca jacket and in a matter of seconds, we knew enough about him to care. In 2015, we see the boy playing an iPad game and although we’re shown he owns big boxes of comic books, we’re never shown which titles. Is he a Marvel fan or dedicated to DC? Superman or Wonderwoman? Why should we care about this kid? To be fair, there is one scene in this movie that’s been successfully updated for the 21st century. The little girl’s disappeared and the parents are struggling with the decision of calling the police. Their reasons for deciding not to are probably the scariest thing in this movie because those reasons are very real, not supernatural. And therein lies the worst rub, as far as the horror element in Poltergeist is concerned. The real scares come from reality at its least supernatural. If you enjoy watching the kind of torture porn that shows people suffering the shock and horror of cancelled credit cards, the terror of discovering your new neighbourhood has no malls, and the claustrophobia of trite and awkward dinner conversations — this one’s for you.