Bad, bad, bad.... No talent, no soul, nothing added to the original and no interesting new take or re-imagining. Wasted opportunity. The comic ending was an insult! Avoid - watch the original which is a real film gem.

To begin with the cast is terrible! Nobody has any chemistry and you get no real sense of actual family life. I didn't get one feeling of a connection between anyone or actual decently acted sorrow, fear, desperation etc etc. I think the weakest role was that of the mother. In the original she shines through beautifully and you get such a lovely mother/daughter relationship. You can see the chemistry in the original between the mother and father and they actually look in love, where as in this it's incredibly stale.I like Sam Rockwell but this is definitely not the role for him! He feels very much out of place and we know he is capable of so much more. It's a real shame because Craig T Nelson was fantastic as the father and really felt like a man trying his best to do what he could for his family.As usual the CGI is crap and unnessacary, it adds nothing to the film and gives away far too much. They show way way to much of the other side and I really think it was used as a crutch for all the action.There's very little music, it's photography is boring and leaves no impression.They have changed so many good aspects about the original, like the fact that the spirits were infact innocent people who had reached out to Carol Anne because of her ability. The brother some how felt like the main character of the film and took again away the connection between the parents and thier youngest daughter. The scene with the boy's braces worked so well in the original and the moving chairs etc. We lost all of that in this crappy remakeThe action scenes are awful and they showed their hand immediately by making the house seem scary and eery to the son. I don't see how you can make a bog standard beige house scary just by hasving cuboards, trees and hall ways but that's what they have attempted. It's crap! really not worth watching and it left you not giving a damn about what happened to any of them.

This movie startet actually pretty okay, at least way better than I expected. For around 45 minutes I said to myself "This isn't so bad. That's a solid 6.5." Okay, there wasn't happening much, but that's not a bad thing. You keep the pacing slow and than some strange things start to happen, until the girl disappears and the family decides "to call someone". But instead some freaky, weird and maybe creepy lady showing up, there just came this drunk fella, pissing me in the face for 45 minutes. This became so absurd in a bad way, so dumb dialogue, so unnecessary scenes, so never ending stoned / drunk Sam Rockwell, that I can't imagine how this was green lit in the first place. Filmed. Produced. Showed in cinemas. I mean: What the heck? Did someone even bother to read through the entire script?!But there's one good thing about this pile of horse rubbish. I realised what is the problem with all those (remakes of) modern horror films: They don't take the subject seriously. They don't buy their own stories. There isn't the same sense of wonder and believe in occultism, that has been in the late 60s, 70s and maybe early 80s. That's why they produce such mindless bull crap.Seriously - don't watch this.

This remake of the 1982 Tobe Hooper classic won't make you forget its famed predecessor, but it probably also won't elicit any outrage at the audacity of trying to improve on greatness. In other words, it's a satisfying horror movie as long as one doesn't hold it to the original's high standards.If you haven't seen the original, here's how it breaks down. Family moves into a new house in suburbia, a mom (Rosemarie DeWitt), a dad (Sam Rockwell), teenage daughter, younger daughter, young son. Strange things begin to happen, as they do in these movies. The young daughter disappears, but she seems to be trapped in the television by malevolent spirits. The family contacts a specialist (the great Zelda Rubenstein in the original, Jared Harris here) to help them out.This is not a shot-for-shot remake, and for that we should all be thankful. The parents aren't pot-smoking ne'er-do-wells; dad's just been laid off, and mom's a writer. (Which makes me wonder how they can afford the new house, but hey, I think maybe the fact that there are malevolent spirits has something to do with it.) Gone are scenes like the medium's assistant tearing his face off in the bathroom or all of the kitchen chairs suddenly appearing on top of the kitchen table. There's other, new stuff. It's kind of fun.The movie doesn't break any new ground, though. 35 years have gone by here in the real world, and the effects – though frightening at times – aren't going to bowl you over. The acting is actually pretty good here, particularly by DeWitt, Harris, and Jane Adams. Even the kids are good, and of course the little darlin' who gets sucked into the other world is adorable as can be. Only Rockwell seems miscast. He's best at quirky, offbeat roles, not man-of-the-house roles. This was more of a role for a Greg Kinnear.So while this Poltergeist remake didn't enthrall me, I found it tolerable for a rental. Kind of glad I did not see it in the theater, and the effects still looked good on my TV at home.