Poltergeist Movie Blurb by Shale May 22, 2015 This week I watched the 1982 Poltergeist movie by Steven Spielberg just for comparison to the remake. I was thinking that the 3-decade old film could be updated to modern times but now I see that it was a failed effort. The old, dated movie is still better than the modern one. And I was not alone in this disappointment. The aggregate reviews on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 36% fresh and only 41% of audiences liked it. This movie's plot mostly follows Spielberg's story with a few differences. Eric (Sam Rockwell) and Amy (Rosemarie DeWitt) Bowen are having to downsize and move to a cheaper home. The family is none too happy about this going in - and it just gets worse starting the first night. The Bowen family structure is the same as the first movie. The smallest girl Maddie (Kennedi Clements) is the one who hears the voices in the flat screen TV and gives the line "They're Here!" The middle child Griffin (Kyle Catlett) is afraid of everything and there is the scary tree outside his window and a scary clown doll that terrorizes him in his room. (Why would anyone give such a grotesque thing to a child?) The oldest teen daughter Kendra (Saxon Sharbino) has attitude and smarts off to her parents more than I would have allowed. After the youngest daughter is taken by the spooks and talks to them thru the TV, they contact the paranormal ppl as in the first movie and proceed with the rope into the other dimension. Well, I can't really invest too much into this blurb. I suppose everyone has seen the original 1982 movie. If you haven't, find a source and watch it. This one has more sophisticates special effects, but the 33-year-old one had some good effects for the time that worked as well. Actually, I liked the mean closet monster better in the old movie. This is one time an update on a classic was not necessary.
SPOILER WARNINGDO NOT READ UNTIL AFTER SEEING THE MOVIE(BUT I WOULD REALLY RECOMMEND NOT SEEING THE MOVIE) I woke up this morning thinking about this movie yesterday that left me annoyed after seeing it. Let me count the ways: Mercifully this movie is only an hour and a half long. The original was 20 minutes longer but wisely used that extra time to slowly build a plot of harmless, amusing paranormal occurrences (the chair sliding along the kitchen floor, the chairs being stacked on the table when you look away for a moment) This movie jumped right into the spooks meandering thru the house messing with the lights and electronic toys. The family is moving because Eric (Sam Rockwell) was laid off and they are having financial problems. He goes to the store where he discovers two of his credit cards are maxed out. A third one lets him make purchases. So, he goes to the mall and buys an iphone for his daughter, jewelry for his wife and a radio controlled hovercraft for his boy. WTF! The iphone and hovercraft were used to advance the plot but his irresponsibility annoyed me and detracted me from the intent of the movie. When the family went to the Paranormal Research Center at the college, Lead Investigator Dr. Brooke Powell (Jane Adams) was sincere and actually seemed a little intimidated by the spooks same as the character in the first movie. But Tech Nerd Boyd (Nicholas Braun) is skeptical and grilling the boy about how long his dad has been out of work, suspecting a scam to make money. This was AFTER a spook grabbed a chair out from under him and smashed it against the wall. Oh, Boyd was also part of an "idiot plot" device; you know, everyone in the audience yelling not to do something that the idiot does anyhow. He is drilling a hole in the closet wall to mount a device when something yanks the whole drill and wire thru the wall, leaving a hole. HE REACHES THRU THE HOLE INTO THE DARKNESS SEARCHING FOR THE DRILL!. No, normal ppl do not do that - they jump up and run screaming downstairs for help. Then, when he has this bizarre scene where his arm is held in the hole by something and he is about to be killed by the drill but eventually it turns out to be an hallucination he keeps it to himself. Fire the incompetent paranormal investigator! So, those are the four major problems that annoyed me about this movie. Just sayin'
