A couple are been haunted by evil forces in the new house they are looking to buy and must put their heads together if they will rescue Maddy from the spirits that have held her captive.
I'm not a hardcore horror fan, so I can't say whether hardcore horror fans will like this movie. But I can say that I think Poltergeist has potential outside the group of people who normally see horror movies.
There's little doubt that nostalgia played a part in Fox's decision to remake Poltergeist, but that's a poor reason for any film's existence and no excuse for how uninspired Gil Kenan's re-imagining of this one turned out.
Poltergeist does benefit from briskness-it's actually 20 minutes shorter than Hooper's film-and there is a nice, Evil Dead 2-esque sequence involving a power drill.
The original film was promoted with the tagline "It knows what scares you." If there was a truth-in-advertising law regarding films, this movie's ad copy would read: "Poltergeist: Meh."
Despite [its] reverential treatment, Kenan and producer Sam Raimi manage to serve up an effective supernatural horror film that's capable of standing on its own feet.
