Poltergeist – Reviewed by David Turpin

Directed by Gil Kenan

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jared Harris

In this oddly muted re-tread of the fondly remembered 1982 haunted house yarn, a family once again find themselves contending with a malevolent supernatural presence with nefarious designs on their youngest daughter. Parents Amy and Eric Bowen (Rosemarie DeWitt and Sam Rockwell), facing the kind of financial crisis that can only be solved by moving to a four-bedroom palace in suburbia, find their credit rating is the least of their worries when angelic Madison (well played by the exotically named Kennedi Clements) is abducted by a presence that contacts her through the television set. That television is now a flat-screen, and there is some token business involving drone footage, but otherwise the film is content to reprise the greatest hits of its parent, albeit somewhat lifelessly.

The original Poltergeist (1982) was no masterpiece, principally because director Tobe Hooper’s ghoulish sensibility and mordant wit seemed to have been excessively tamped down by producer Steven Spielberg. Nevertheless, its combination of ghost train ride and family values homily had a consistent inventiveness, along with a few pleasing touches of gothic camp to leaven proceedings.

One might expect, with Sam Raimi filling Spielberg’s role, for the remake to skew more hair-raising than would-be-heart-warming, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. In fact, while the opening scenes conjure a reasonably credible family dynamic, the scares – when they arrive – are largely a damp squib. The problem doesn’t arise from rating-consciousness – a hurdle that’s been successfully navigated by any number of previous films, perhaps most notably The Ring (2002) – but from the familiarity of the set-ups (scary clown dolls, etc.) and the blandness of the visuals. Little of the zippy pacing and eye for detail that director Gil Kenan brought to his debut, the animated Monster House (2006), is in evidence here.

The film is salvaged by a stronger cast than this type of material usually attracts. DeWitt comes perilously close to making Amy seem like a real person – although one of the film’s few deviations from the original serves to side-line her at a crucial moment in order to privilege male personal development over maternal valour. Jane Adams is always good value, and she brings some welcome wit to the part of an academic specialising in the paranormal. Jared Harris – taking over the memorable Zelda Rubenstein role from the original – seizes upon his scenery-chewing cameo with relish, apparently undeterred by the fact that he played a very similar part in The Quiet Ones just last year. The special effects are a mixed bag – gaining little from murky 3D – but there is a pleasing pseudo-scientific aspect to the film’s emphasis on the electrical properties of the haunting that lends some much needed character.