Poltergeist ***
Dir: Gil
Kenan. With: Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie de Witt, Saxon Sharbino, Kyle Catlett,
Kennedi Clements, Jared Harris, Jane Adams. 15 cert, 93 min
1982’s original Poltergeist,
directed by Tobe Hooper under writer-producer Steven Spielberg’s eye for
boosting popcorn sales, was always chiefly a commercial concern: a funfair Exorcist that ditched its predecessor’s
spiritual agonies for more material, Reagan-era concerns. It’s hardly an
untouchable property; we need not whine unduly about Fox retooling it. It helps
that the director charged with renovating this ghost train, Gil Kenan, sets
about his task in the manner of his fantastic 2006 digimation Monster House. Lights flicker, things go
bump in the night and – thanks to 3D – much of it lands inches from your face.
Again, it’s reasonable fun while it lasts.
Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie de Witt, a couple you instinctively warm to, play
the Bowens, setting out on a fresh start by installing themselves and their three
kids in suburbia. Their new home, inevitably, has a few glitches. Yes, the rats
can be trapped; the electromagnetic disturbances attributed to nearby
powerlines. Yet youngest Madison (Kennedi Clements) still winds up pressed to
the (newly widescreen) TV, son Griffin (Kyle Catlett) unsettled by a cache of toy
clowns – a reminder the original just pipped Stephen King’s remake-ready It to coulrophobia. (Were we being warned
about children’s entertainers even back then?)
Around these holdovers, Rabbit Hole playwright David Lindsay-Abaire scatters tantalising flickers of
subtext. Where the first movie’s Freelings were upwardly mobile baby boomers,
the Bowens are subject to recognisable austerity-age stresses and tensions – not
least trying to raise three kids on a diminishing income. Within a brisk,
two-shows-a-night running time, there’s also room for a little character: since
no one person was ever likely to match Zelda Rubinstein’s inimitable work as
the original’s psychic, we instead get chewy parts for Jane Adams and Jared
Harris as the academic and Derek Acorah-like investigator running tests for
paranormal activity.
Mostly it’s a scare machine, and in this respect Kenan’s is the more
efficient telling, its VFX lubricating all that now creaks about the original:
the 3D enables such shameless jolts as comin’-atcha drill bits, but also
reimagines Madison’s haunted closet as a completely enveloping black hole. The Poltergeist phenomenon has never been
more than just a ride, inviting us to pay over the odds for some pretty cheap
thrills; adding a 3D surcharge scarcely addresses that. Accept it, however, and
the remake has been engineered in broadly the right carnival spirit. It should
shift a lot of popcorn, if nothing else.
Poltergeist is now playing in cinemas nationwide.
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