Poltergeist

A modest family relocate due to financial troubles and soon find themselves knee deep in a haunted house with a difference. When the youngest daugher is simply 'taken' by a poltergeist into an alternate dimension...cue the CGI and all manner of ridiculous mayhem modern cinema can conjure! Tobe Hooper's Spielberg-produced 1982 original is a remarkable film that still to this day has people shuddering at the thought of a toy clown, a tree, a dwarf paranormal expert, and impending storms to trigger the other side into making contact most violent. To remake this film was of course a cash decision to generate cheap thrills and box office smash 'n' grab to naive teens, not to bring anything new, and actually drop some of the true resonance of the original masterpiece (kids counting the time between lightning and thunder, Indian burial mystique, dark humour instead of obvious gags). What we are left with is a half-arsed attempt at chills forgoing the accessible WTF felt along after the lights come up in a cinema. Rockwell is miscast, hungover and bored as the misbelieving dad who quickly goes along with whatever's put in front of him, and while the kids are solid enough, you simply don't get scared after the first 20 minutes. And as for the 'clown' sequence now being a 'clowns' sequence; poor form in extinguishing the potential thrill too quickly, whereas the original left the stamp inside an audience's head for generations.