Director: Gil Kenan
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Duration: 101 minutes
Poltergeist Extended Cut (DVD) – Movie Review
A Poltergeist, German for “noisy ghost”, is a nasty little creature. They’re supernatural beings responsible for physical disturbances like loud noises and objects being moved. However, they seem to be able to do a whole lot more, and this is proven in this movie. Let’s see how the “new” Bowen family weighs up against them in this remake of the 1982 movie (hint: pretty poorly).
In Poltergeist, we meet the Bowen family in what seems to be their every day normal life. Due to money issues, they have to move to a smaller house and soon enough they find one in the suburbs. It’s cheap and large enough for the family so why not? Even while on their first visit, strange things start happening as Griffin (Kyle Catlett) sees his little sister Madison (Kennedi Clements) talking to a wardrobe, refusing to explain what just happened. It’s even weirder when Eric (Sam Rockwell) comes in and can’t seem to budge the closet door the slightest.
Shortly after that, Kendra (Saxon Sharbino) also notices strange things and tries to tell her parents, Amy (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Eric but they want no part of it. The house looks perfect and they’re taking it, to the dislikes of their children. Once they move in, more strange things happen as Madison keeps talking to her “imaginary friends” and weird noises wake up Griffin at night. However, all hell breaks loose once Amy and Sam go out of the house for a while. The events that happen next convince even them that something is awfully wrong.
The pace at which events happen in Poltergeist is really quick. Weird occurrences start happening within ten minutes of the start of the movie and throughout the movie there’s constantly stuff going down, there’s no time for the family to take a break. However, even though it has a quick pace, it doesn’t really have any suspense whatsoever which is pretty much what you want in this kind of genre. There’s some jump scares here and there but for the rest it’s not really that suspenseful or scary. Slowly panning around a corner, expecting something to happen doesn’t really seem to work in Poltergeist, maybe it’s the music and special effects or the lack of them in key moments? It also follows the same age old scenario that a lot of thrillers seem to have: a family buys a new house, strange stuff starts happening, they stay, even weirder stuff happens and they still stay put…
Acting performance could be a bit better for everyone overall. It doesn’t really seem convincing that the family is scared, when things happen they just charge at it head on without thinking. Madison for instance is a little girl that talks to beings that the rest of the family doesn’t even see, most movies succeed in making that girl extremely scary and creepy, but the performance just didn’t cut it. Another one is Kendra, she’s just texting and chilling most of the time, complaining about stuff that doesn’t even matter (pretty much your typical teenager), but she doesn’t really play any big role in the movie. Pretty much the whole family except for Griffin isn’t that exciting to begin with. The most fun acting performances come from people outside of the family who come to their aid, but that’s for you to discover.
When it comes to extras on the DVD, there’s an okay amount of them. The DVD features the theatrical version and extended cut of the movie, as well as an alternative ending, photo gallery and some trailers for you to enjoy before and after you watched the movie. A gag reel would also have been a fun addition, definitely because it’s a horror/thriller movie.
Conclusion
All in all, Poltergeist is an okay movie, it’s not the greatest ever seen of its kind but it has its fun moments. The story pace is really quick but it fails to deliver on the suspense side of the horror and thriller genres. However, it might be a fun watch for people who are new to the genre as it’s not that scary or for people who want to see what they did to the original movie.
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