Poltergeist 2015

Poltergeist 2015 Release Date: May 22, 2015

Proving yet again that Hollywood doesn’t have an original brain amongst its writers, Poltergeist, a classic 1982 film, produced by Steven Spielberg, is getting an unnecessary remake.

The original, 1982 Poltergeist, is the first and most successful film of the Poltergeist film trilogy.

If you are among the few who have not seen Poltergeist, while living in an average family house in a pleasant neighborhood, the youngest daughter of the Freeling family, Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke), seems to be connecting with the supernatural through a dead channel on the televison. It is not for long when the mysterious beings enter the house’s walls. At first seeming like harmless ghosts, they play tricks and amuse the family, but they take a nasty turn by horrifying the family to death with angry trees and murderous dolls, and finally abduct Carol Anne into her bedroom closet, which seems like the entrance to the other side.

Poltergeist was released on June 4, 1982 and took in $76,606,280 at the movie box office. In today’s dollars, that would be over $250,000,000. It was Rated-PG because the only ratings in existence at the time were G, PG and R.

To this day, it remains one of the scariest movies of all time. The 1982 Poltergeist is a marginal masterpiece but lacks a lot of movie magic, in part, because Steven Spielberg did not direct the film. He only produced Poltergeist. Steven Spielberg was hard at work filming E.T. the same time that Poltergeist was being made. Both movies, E.T. and Poltergeist, were released in June 1982.

The original Poltergeist star, Heather O’Rourke, died at age 12 from cardiac arrest on an operating table after suffering from flu like symptoms, which many say were misdiagnosed as Crohn’s Disease.

In this new Poltergeist, Sam Raimi and director Gil Kenan reimagine and contemporize the classic tale about a family whose suburban home is invaded by angry spirits. When the terrifying apparitions escalate their attacks and take the youngest daughter, the family must come together to rescue her.

POLTERGEIST (2015) Review
By Audrey Shine (Wild About Movies resident critic)

I think Hollywood has gone too far with remakes. I went along with Superman and Spiderman – but Poltergeist just doesn’t live up to the original in any dimension.

The characters in the original were unforgettable. With all due respect to Sam Rockwell and Jared Harris, how could they even hope to compete with Craig T. Nelson (Steve, the dad), JoBeth Williams (Diane), Diane Lesh (Beatrice), and Zelda Rubenstein (Tangina, the medium) when the story was shocking and fresh? Ms. Rubenstein, in particular, made the movie unique.

Shockingly to me, 1982 original had better special effects and more terrifying tension than this remake in 2015 with all the power and resource of Hollywood special effects geniuses and the luxury of retrospection.

In fairness, our waiter at the “fork and screen” dine in theatre did not know this was a remake of an earlier classic. That’s a shame…I went home and watched the original again -still scary after all these years.

When the Beatles broke up, George Harrison was quoted as saying “you can’t reheat a souffle. ‘Nough said.