Review Roundup: 1982's Horror Film POLTERGEIST Gets a Reboot

The classic 1982 horror film POLTERGEIST has been reimagined and contemporized for a 2015 audience by director Gil Kenan.

Using the same name as its predecessor, POLTERGEIST follows the story of a suburban family whose home becomes possessed with demons. When the apparitions become increasingly more violent and kidnap the youngest daughter, the distraught family must band together to rescue her before it is too late.

The film's screenplay was written by David Lindsay-Abaire and the story was conceived by Steven Spielberg. POLTERGEIST stars Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Saxon Sharbino, Kyle Catlett, Kennedi Clements, and Jared Harris.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

Kyle Smith, New York Post: The remake improves on the original in a couple of respects: The effects are much better, of course - there's a fantastically creepy interval set among rows of restless corpses underground - and the script is lightly witty without resorting to cheap self-mockery of the "we know we're just characters in a movie" variety that ruins so many horror movies.

Andrew Barker, Variety: Less a steadily escalating thriller than a guided tour through a county-fair-style haunted house, "Poltergeist" offers some quality jump scares, and Kenan has a knack for staging solid individual setpieces. But he proves weirdly incapable of modulation or mood setting here, stringing together loud noises and "right behind you!" jolts without much regard for pacing or buildup.

Justin Lowe, The Hollywood Reporter: Kenan's overall improvements to the movie's visual style aren't only attributable to advances in technology and a 3D update, however. While Hooper favored shock value and jump scares, Kenan and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe construct far more fluid sequences as the camera glides and hovers over its subjects, reserving the most impactful shots for the climactic scenes, particularly a concluding sequence that's particularly thrilling.

Clark Collis, Entertainment Weekly: Poltergeist does benefit from briskness-it's actually 20 minutes shorter than Hooper's film-and there is a nice, Evil Dead 2-esque sequence involving a power drill. The film also has a winning cast, which includes Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt as the tormented parents attempting to rescue their supernaturally-trapped youngest kid (Kennedi Clements), and Jared Harris, whose rogue psychic investigator is one of the film's few new-ish elements. But the only really frightening thing about the 2015 version of Poltergeist is how haunted it is by the original.

Phil Hoad, The Guardian: It's a shame Kenan can't muster his own bit of gothic shorthand for post-credit crunch America, but the film still has a fluid, 3D-orientated immediacy that produces one beautiful sequence: a hallucinatory child abduction via the bedroom closet in the finest supernatural-suburban tradition of Spielberg, the original's writer-producer. But aside from CGI-boosted shocks, it's clear the new Poltergeist won't be laid to rest before any serious tension is long gone.

Mikey McCahill, The Telegraph: 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.

Michael Gingold, Fangoria: For the most part, though, it's the likable and empathetic bond between the Bowens that carries POLTERGEIST through to its inevitable apocalyptic end, even as it loses some of its scary hold at the point when the stakes are at their highest. Acknowledgement should be paid that what seemed at first like Exhibit A for unnecessary remakes has turned out quite a bit better than expected, albeit tempered with the disappointment that the more its title character(s) come to the fore, the more the movie gives up the ghost.

Lucy O'Brien, IGN: Despite the potential of a modern suburban setting, Poltergeist descends into a paint-by-numbers haunted house horror that struggles to justify its existence. Those who haven't seen the original will find a competent - if uninspired - movie here, but fans are better served turning off the lights and spending the evening with the Freelings instead.

Alonso Duralde, The Wrap: "Poltergeist" ultimately plays like the most perfunctory of remakes, one born of rights ownership and title marketability rather than a burning desire on anyone's part to do something interesting or provocative with a classic. The 1982 original remains unassailable, all the more so when stood side by side with its pipsqueak descendant.

Kalyn Corrigan, Bloody Disgusting: Mostly, however, this revamped tale owes its greatest debt to its name, which calls for the comparison of one of the greatest horror movies ever made, overlooked by one of the greatest directors to ever work in film. Honestly, this movie doesn't hold a candle to the 1982 classic, but as a stand alone movie, it's actually pretty entertaining and frightening. If only it wasn't called Poltergeist.

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