POLTERGEIST

The Bowen family, consisting of Eric and Amy and their three children Kendra, Griffin, and Madison, quickly went from a prosperous condition to a rather severe economic crisis, caused by the dismissal of the head of the family and the unemployment of his wife. This situation forces the Bowens to change houses and move into a smaller, less comfortable villa on the outskirts, which creates discomfort and bad moods, especially in the eldest daughter Kendra. But the worst is yet to come. Strange presences begin to manifest themselves through the electronic devices of the house, and the one who perceives them more directly is Madison, who from the very beginning interacts with mysterious friends hidden inside the wardrobe of her bedroom and inside the living room television. A dangerous friendship that will lead the little girl to be kidnapped by demons into another dimension from which it will be very difficult to bring her back. To save their beloved daughter, the parents turn to a team of mediums who will engage in a long duel with the dark forces that inhabit the house. Remake or not remake? This is the banal and timely question that torments and divides horror enthusiasts every time we find ourselves faced with a practice that has become very fashionable, even abused, in the last fifteen years, which only makes sense in the case where the plot of the original model is used to tell something new with different methods and points of view, as happened with the excellent "The House" by Fede Alvarez and "Dawn of the Dead" by Zack Snyder. These two, however, are only some of the few successful titles in the difficult task of revitalizing and renewing past works, since the list of remakes ready to swell the ranks of the detractors of such practice is quite substantial and would be a long exercise to repeat it here. Another victim of this commercial machine this time is "Poltergeist - Demoniacal Presences", a cult film of 1982 directed by Tobe Hooper and produced by Steven Spielberg, which is given a second life thanks to the Israeli director Gil Kenan, who, under the protective wing of a Sam Raimi here as a producer, brings to life a film that fully enters the special classification of the most useless and ugly remakes of the last decade, and also with good chances of placing itself in the high ranks of this unflattering ranking. As soon as the viewing is over, it is difficult to remember all the blunders of a film that has the great demerit of inserting very few elements of novelty compared to the original and copying the film by Hooper in every way, thus accepting a comparison already lost from the start. Kenan, in fact, not only falls into the trap of referring too shamelessly to a model so dated but also tries to adapt it to the rhythms and methods of staging of our time. On screen, we thus witness representations that, more than instilling fear, descend into the ridiculous and contribute to stripping of all their horrific charge those elements strongly iconic in the 1982 film: the tree, here, becomes a simple piece of wood that does not scare even a child, the clown doll is clumsy, and the demons created in computer graphics show a rough care. The director, therefore, appears totally ignorant of all the mechanisms of tension, and the photography of Javier Aguirresarobe only worsens the situation with its absolute inadequacy in creating unsettling atmospheres that know how to touch the genuine chords of terror. A general mediocrity that becomes more and more evident and culminates in a disappointing ending, as was to be expected, in which a car flies and crashes into the house in full disaster movie style and a journey into the other dimension that, although not a bad idea, is rendered poorly due to images similar to a low-quality video game. But the horrific aspect is not the only discordant note of the film. As if it were not enough, Kenan also botches his only attempt to introduce something of his own, describing in a clumsy and messy way a family in economic crisis (in Hooper's film, the Freelings were the typical well-off American middle-class family) without, however, explaining in detail how and why they are in such a state of discomfort. The situation worsens with the performance of a cast that is generally not up to the task and includes, in addition to Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Kennedi Clements, a Jared Harris whose talent is nullified by a character who, inserted in place of the legendary Tangina, more than a ghostbuster resembles an out-of-place exorcist and protagonist of jokes bordering on the grotesque. In conclusion, therefore, "Poltergeist" is a bad and forgettable film both as a remake and as a standalone film.