Review of Poltergeist (2015) by Robertobrien — 02 Jul 2015

This remake is exactly what I thought it would be. And that is bad. This is bad as a stand alone movie and a remake.

This movie has no character development, no plot development, no suspense, no atmosphere, no tension, and there is no stakes as to what is happening to these cardboard characters.

The modernization of this film only makes it harder to watch. When they used a god forsaken drone as one of the central plot-points, I contemplated walking out of the theatre. This movie has no reason to be shown in 3D, and when the 3D is actually utilized, it's obnoxious.

It's a shame, because the movie has a competent cast. But even with that, Saxon Sharbino, Rosemarie Dewitt and Jane Adams are the only cast members who have any of the charisma that the original film's cast had.

To put it in short, Poltergeist is a watered down, rushed and incompetent retelling of a much better film. The only updates to the story the film has are useless, and don't change enough from the original to be surprising to older audiences. The cast is fine, but the writing, the directing and the execution don't hold a candle to the original film. Even as a standalone story, the movie is a poorly directed and written ghost story, that will leave no impact on the viewer due to it's lack of character development, lack of suspenseful scenes, and lack of anything of substance. This remake blends into the crowd of current jumpscare heavy ghost films and will assuredly be forgotten very soon. Which is probably for the best.