The brand new Poltergeist movie came out and I thought to myself, "Hey! Here's something that might make your spine tingle!" So I decided to give it a shot.
Right away I was very impressed, because while the new movie paid lip service to the old (The tree, the TV, the clown dolls, etc) it didn't go overboard and run with those themes. Each of the old themes was used once or twice, then quickly abandoned for something entirely new.
The teenage girl of the movie is a typical teenager of the modern day and age: she's connected to her cell phone and her laptop and can't be bothered to look away unless it's to coddle the youngest girl. The little girl communes with ghosts primarily through her room via the closet, where they "live", though they mess with electronics pretty bad when they get active. Once scene has their voices being heard through the headphones on the phone when it was playing music seconds earlier. This leads to the worst game of Hot/Cold to ever be played, with the teenager losing all around.
The young boy, Griffon, is a cowardly little thing with early onset undetermined neurosis, which is only amplified when the A) clowns rain from a hidden closet B) the creepy tree goes to great lengths to grapple him and C) parents ignore everything he says in exchange for a drone. They buy him a drone to silence his legitimate concerns that his kid sister, some six-year-old, is speaking to forces that stack comic books into rigid inverted pyramids after throwing baseballs around. To all the dorky little kids like Griffon, he shows them it pays to be the whiner, because throughout most of the movie he's the only one who seems to know what's going on. Hell, he even travels to the land of the dead people (not a technical term, but its an alternate dimension made out of wailing souls of dead people) to save his kid sister after she got her ass trapped there in the first place.
To top it off, when the family thinks they're going to leave and everyone is going to get a nice fuzzy ending, the whole movie goes crazy. I won't ruin it for you, but dead bodies are flying and an old man screams at ghosts to calm themselves, despite showing off for an entire film they don't even know what that word means.
As for a setting, the movie takes place in a, you guessed it, newly built house in a new subdivision beneath the power lines (Kendra, the teenage sister, seems afraid of getting tumors). At a dinner party the parents attend they find out that not only was their home built on an old graveyard, it seems highly suspect that they moved the bodies. This is only confirmed later on when a casket bursts through the pavement with a leering corpse inside. They got rid of the ancient Indian burial ground and even make a joke about it (Haha! Meta-humor).
For a remake with a limited budget and a few middle-name celebrities, this wasn't that bad a flick. I would certainly see it in 3-D if given the chance again, as that just made things fly out at the most opportune times. When it comes out on DVD or Blu-Ray, I might pick it up. Depends on what kind of mood I'm in, though if I'm out around the general public it'll probably be an aggressive, seething mood. Been having those more recently, don't know why.
But as a movie, I rate it 7.5 out of 10, a respectable score for a respectable movie. Good job Ghost House!
Right away I was very impressed, because while the new movie paid lip service to the old (The tree, the TV, the clown dolls, etc) it didn't go overboard and run with those themes. Each of the old themes was used once or twice, then quickly abandoned for something entirely new.
The teenage girl of the movie is a typical teenager of the modern day and age: she's connected to her cell phone and her laptop and can't be bothered to look away unless it's to coddle the youngest girl. The little girl communes with ghosts primarily through her room via the closet, where they "live", though they mess with electronics pretty bad when they get active. Once scene has their voices being heard through the headphones on the phone when it was playing music seconds earlier. This leads to the worst game of Hot/Cold to ever be played, with the teenager losing all around.
The young boy, Griffon, is a cowardly little thing with early onset undetermined neurosis, which is only amplified when the A) clowns rain from a hidden closet B) the creepy tree goes to great lengths to grapple him and C) parents ignore everything he says in exchange for a drone. They buy him a drone to silence his legitimate concerns that his kid sister, some six-year-old, is speaking to forces that stack comic books into rigid inverted pyramids after throwing baseballs around. To all the dorky little kids like Griffon, he shows them it pays to be the whiner, because throughout most of the movie he's the only one who seems to know what's going on. Hell, he even travels to the land of the dead people (not a technical term, but its an alternate dimension made out of wailing souls of dead people) to save his kid sister after she got her ass trapped there in the first place.
To top it off, when the family thinks they're going to leave and everyone is going to get a nice fuzzy ending, the whole movie goes crazy. I won't ruin it for you, but dead bodies are flying and an old man screams at ghosts to calm themselves, despite showing off for an entire film they don't even know what that word means.
As for a setting, the movie takes place in a, you guessed it, newly built house in a new subdivision beneath the power lines (Kendra, the teenage sister, seems afraid of getting tumors). At a dinner party the parents attend they find out that not only was their home built on an old graveyard, it seems highly suspect that they moved the bodies. This is only confirmed later on when a casket bursts through the pavement with a leering corpse inside. They got rid of the ancient Indian burial ground and even make a joke about it (Haha! Meta-humor).
For a remake with a limited budget and a few middle-name celebrities, this wasn't that bad a flick. I would certainly see it in 3-D if given the chance again, as that just made things fly out at the most opportune times. When it comes out on DVD or Blu-Ray, I might pick it up. Depends on what kind of mood I'm in, though if I'm out around the general public it'll probably be an aggressive, seething mood. Been having those more recently, don't know why.
But as a movie, I rate it 7.5 out of 10, a respectable score for a respectable movie. Good job Ghost House!
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