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Scary? Yes. Tension producing?
Yes. Mysterious? A little. Poltergeist is
even funny at times. I’m not a big
fan of the genre, and did not see the four previous versions (and since this is
the fifth, I seriously doubt there is
much in it that is original), but taken on its own merits and disregarding the
others, I found it to be a pretty decent rendition of a horror film.
It
starts out in a rather glum tone because the father, Eric Bowen (Rockwell) has
just been laid off his executive level job, so the family must settle on a
lower grade house in a new community.
Parents Eric and Amy (DeWitt) are putting a good face on it for their
kids, Kendra, Griffin and Madison, but it’s clear that adjustments will have to
be made with some effort. Maddy
starts to feel right at home almost from the get-go, and even seems to be
making friends. That is, she is
talking to someone, but only Griffin notices, and he dismisses it as her simply
being imaginative, and says she needs to get a better grip on reality.
Griffin
is known to be “sensitive”, so he starts complaining right away about bumps in
the night, a weird clown left behind by the previous tenants in his closet, and
the skylight on the roof of his bedroom showing trees swaying menacingly even
when it isn’t stormy, and when it does become stormy…oh my! Others in the family start to notice a
few things, like static electricity on the stair banister, lights coming on in
the middle of the night, strange noises, etc. But things really get hairy when the parents go out to
dinner (in hopes of new job prospects for Erik) and leave Kendra to
babysit. During the evening, her
treasured possession, cell phone, starts doing wonky things, which prompts her
to start filming with it, and she ends up witnessing the floor starting to
crack as if there were an earthquake, and horrible black gunk arising out of
it.
The
parents are so horrified to learn about this when they come home, they consult
paranormal experts (Erik worries that if they call the police, they’ll be seen
as psychotic and their kids taken away), who do indeed grasp what is happening,
and when they realize how serious things are, call in the nationally known
expert, Carrigan Burke (Harris).
He not only has the academic credentials, but he has scars to prove his
entanglements with spirits. By
this time, Maddy is missing, and the family is distraught. Will he be able to bring Maddy
back? And if he does, at what
cost?
I
jumped and held onto my seat during the course of Poltergeist, and apparently most of the audience did too, from what
I could hear. It seems to me that Director
Gil Kenan, screenwriters David Lindsay-Abaire and Steven Spielberg, and
cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe have delivered on their aims of making an
interesting, exciting, scary production.
Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt are two of my favorite actors, and
they easily step into their roles here.
Most impressive is Jared Harris, whose performance in a myriad of
different roles, attests to his ability to provide gravitas and mysteriousness
in his role here as “the fixer.”
But
I have to ask, “Why was this film made?”
Is it to appeal to those who are interested in this genre and love
seeing the same film over and over again (thus being a money making project)? What did Spielberg think he could add
in making another poltergeist film?
We don’t need to do away with the past; let the viewers watch the older
films—that are probably just as good—and make room for creative films that will
advance the industry.
Scary—but apparently not new.
Grade: C By
Donna R. Copeland
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