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3 films that influenced Poltergeist
What critics say influenced Poltergeist
A remake of the Steven Spielberg-penned 1982 horror film “Poltergeist.”
Poltergeist is an update of the 1982 horror of the same name and remains faithful to its story: spirits terrorise a suburban family and make a beeline for the youngest of their three children (Kennedi Clements, whose post-Poltergeist life you fervently hope will be sunnier than that of her predecessor, Heather O’Rourke, who died of a heart attack at 12).
One other thing this Poltergeist has in common with its predecessor: It's not directed by Steven Spielberg.
Generally entertaining yet fundamentally unnecessary, "Poltergeist" is a tribute-band take on one of the horror genre’s greatest hits.
The remake of Poltergeist is faithful enough, but to what end?
Elements of the 1982 original already have been heavily pillaged by other movies, so the shiny 2015 version winds up feeling like a third-rate "Insidious" or "The Conjuring," which already are second-rate riffs on themes found in "Poltergeist."
But for all of the script's tentativeness, Kenan (Monster House) brings a high level of craft to his haunted house film, matching recent overhyped ghost stories like The Conjuring and Insidious.
Yet if these filmmakers, with this cast, had just changed a few more details and freed the movie from the responsibility of the Poltergeist name, we might be talking about a pretty decent little haunted-house flick — something along the lines of Insidious, a well-populated Poltergeist homage rather than an outright retelling.
Few even complained when Poltergeist was recently ‘reimagined’ as Insidious, the most profitable film of 2011.
Yet despite the inciting credit crunch of Kenan's update, the potential horrors of downward mobility give way to the cynicisms of corporate manufacture, as Poltergeist degenerates into a stock series of scares, some seeking to capitalize on the 3D format, others blatantly riffing on the terrors of recent horror franchises like Paranormal Activity and Insidious.
Following in the wake of 2011’s Insidious, which was also deeply indebted to the original Poltergeist, this version – directed by Gil Kenan, produced by Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) – makes largely cosmetic changes to the material without offering much in the way of distinctive frights.
Director Gil Kenan combines warm lighting with eerie tracking shots, takes his time building up the characters, and generally aims to honour the spirit of the original (which was officially directed by Tobe Hooper, but has always been associated mainly with its producer Steven Spielberg, who also produced Kenan's first feature, Monster House).
And when you look at how determined director Gil Kenan has been to evoke a Spielbergian tone in his prior films Monster House and City of Ember , a slavish devotion to the original Poltergeist could certainly have been expected.
For every fun sequence involving scampering clown dolls or a retaliatory power drill, there’s an arbitrary update such as a handy remote-controlled drone or a popular catchphrase-turned-hashtag (#thishouseisclean), and the single liveliest shot evokes Kenan’s first film, the more blatantly Spielbergian Monster House.
Kenan (he did the animated kid flick "Monster House") attempts to match the original's delicate mix of whimsy and horror.
For this newly remade version, director Gil Kenan (the computer-animated "Monster House," "City of Ember") and screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire ("Oz the Great and Powerful," "Rise of the Guardians") keep fairly close to Spielberg's original story, albeit with name and situation changes, along with the updating of technology that's occurred in the intervening 33 years (social media and such, and do any channels go off the air anymore and just show TV "snow" after playing the national anthem as opened the original pic?).
Gil Kenan, whose Monster House was a delightful ode to that transitional time in 80’s cinema that melded the wonder of Spielberg with the eccentricity of Tim Burton, handles these scenes remarkably well.