Poltergeist
Director: Gil Kenan
Talent: Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jared Harris, Jane Adams
Release Date: 22nd May 2015
Sinister forces from beyond-the-grave haunt the Bowen family home in this reboot of the *Poltergeist* franchise.
The powers that be at Fox have taken a sensible approach in updating Poltergeist. There’s enough of the old film here to ease you into the new setting and characters, and enough fresh ideas to justify the new one’s existence as well. The best holdover from the original film is the tight focus on family melodrama: we see the parents Eric (Rockwell) and Amy (DeWitt) struggle with their three children (who have their own sets of problems) and we get a good sense of the love that binds this family, one which helps them overcome insurmountable and hellish odds. Poltergeist does a fine job of imitating and augmenting its source material, avoiding the Rob Zombie pitfall of going full gorno and missing the point of what made the original film scary or enjoyable in the first place.
Words: Luke Maxwell
