Poltergeist

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense frightening sequences, brief suggestive material, and some language.
Run Time: 93 Minutes
My Rating; 3.5/5
Hey everyone, so Monday
I went and saw Twentieth Century Fox and Ghost House Pictures' Poltergeist starring Sam Rockwell (The Way Way Back) and Rosemarie DeWitt (AMC's Mad Men). The film is a reboot of the 1982 horror classic of the same name.  The film tells the story of the Bowen family who relocate to a suburban home after experiencing some financial trouble.  However what they don't know is that their new home is invaded with angry spirits.  When things start to escalate and the spirits end up taking their youngest daughter to the other side, the family must come together in order to save her.
So I actually liked this film and I think that it is a good addition to the horror genre.  However with that being said, I am sure that you have heard mostly negative things about this film.  That is because everyone is comparing it to the original and let me just get this out there, this film is nowhere near the greatness of the original.  It could never have reached that milestone, but on its own, it is actually a pretty good film.  Yes it has its moments of cheesiness, but all movies have that.  Even the greatest movies out there have their moments where they falter a little bit.  However, I actually enjoyed this film and would probably go see it again.
So one thing that I liked about this film is that it wasted no time building suspense.  From the moment the family steps into their new house, weird things begin to happen.  The film knows it is a horror film and wants to reward the audience by building up the suspense early on.  Another thing I liked about this film was that it actually had a lot of funny moments.  I couldn't believe how funny the film actually was.  Now I am not saying that it was funny because of the film itself, but that the script actually contained funny moments.  This is something that is quite rare in horror films.  Horror film don't tend to have comedy in their scripts, so to see that here was actually a good thing for me. Finally, just like the original film that wasn't overly scary, this film wasn't overly scary as well.  Now this may seem weird coming from a person that loves horror films, but the thing that I loved about the original was it didn't focus on jump scares like most horror films do, but it focused on building suspense and keeping that suspense going throughout the entire film.  That is what I thought that this film was able to accomplish; a feat that few films actually do.
With all of the good things about this film, there were still things that weren't so great.  Probably the biggest flaw in this film was the crucial character development.  Though I loved that the film wasted no time in building the suspense, it took away from key character development that needed to happen.  One of the key things in horror films that makes us terrified is not that we are scared of the thing in the film, but we don't want to see the characters on the screen get hurt.  In the beginning of horror films we subconsciously become attached to the characters and then we get scared when we see the characters that we have become attached to get haunted or attacked. Unfortunately in this film, there was no such attachment.  I did not care about a single person in that family which makes it very difficult to feel sorry for them and get scared when strange things start to happen.
Overall, I thought the film, on its own, was pretty good.  Is it as good as the original? No.  Is it the best horror film out there? No.  However, it is a good horror film.  Yes it has its flaws, but so do all films, especially in this genre.  I would recommend this film to everyone, but really I think this film would be most appreciated by a younger audience who haven't seen the original, because they won't be as disappointed as those that have seen the original.  My hope is that after seeing this film, it will lead the younger audience to want to see the original and in my opinion if this film can do that, then I would call it a success.