It’s easy to be cynical these days, what with all the remakes and reboots Hollywood seems dead set on shoving down our throats. Is nothing sacred anymore? Do we really need remakes of every classic movie? Is the original Poltergeist not still relevant?
Questions of relevance aside, the new Poltergeist, starring Sam Rockwell, actually doesn’t look too bad. In fact, I daresay that it looks pretty good.
From the looks of things, the filmmakers are staying true to the original with this outing and much of what scared you the first time is back this go around. TV static? Check. Terrifying closet? Check. Creepy clown? Oh my god, check.
There’s an argument to be made, I suppose, that the original film “suffers” from the limitations of special effects technology of the day and, to that end, it might be kind of cool to see how they play with that today. Bonus points are of course awarded to the fact that the film is being produced by Evil Dead mastermind Sam Raimi, though he did leave directorial duties in someone else’s hands.
While there is a lot to be said—both pro and con—about this frenzy of remakes we’re being given, it’s heartening to see the reverence being shown in this outing. There are right ways and wrongs ways to remake a movie and, from all appearances, it seems that they’re at least attempting to remake Poltergeist the right way.
Poltergeist stars Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt and is expected to be released July 24.
