(Once again: Why remake this movie if there’s nothing to add to it?) There are initial suggestions as the film opens that perhaps the idea that the maybe-danger of living too close to powerlines was going to be a factor in this haunting, and indeed there is a bit of electrical weirdness in the house the Bowen family have just moved in to (you get a shock of static electricity when you touch the wooden bannister on the staircase). This isn’t only technically anachronistic, it’s a narrative cheat. The new Poltergeist just pretends that flatscreen digital TVs (and also cell phones and iPads and other modern electronic devices) receive and display static. But with the advent of cable and now digital, TVs don’t do static today. The first film did such a fantastic job of turning such an ordinary thing (as it was back in the olden days) into something deeply creepy. I wondered, as I was waiting for the lights to go down on my screening, just what screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire ( Oz the Great and Powerful, Rise of the Guardians) and director Gil Kenan were going to do to update the original film’s use of television static as a medium for communicating with The Other Side. (Or pull out the DVD - you probably already own it.) You will lose nothing, and you’ll have a far better time. If you have any inclination to see this Poltergeist, just rent the original. But no one on the supposed creative side of this “new” Poltergeist could be bothered to even pretend to have something to add, something fresh to say that wasn’t said back in 1982 about the trials of a suburban American family whose house is menaced by nasty spirits. I mean, I get the business reason why someone decided it was a good idea to cash in on a nearly 35-year-old movie that many critics (including me) and fans consider one of the greatest horror movies ever made. I don’t understand why this movie exists.
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