They’re Here… Again (Unfortunately)
The ghosts are back, and this time they brought something even scarier than the supernatural — mediocrity.
Gil Kenan’s Poltergeist (2015) is the cinematic equivalent of microwaving a five-star meal from 1982 and wondering why it tastes like plastic. Produced by Sam Raimi — who apparently took “hands-off” producing to a spiritual level — this remake of Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg’s beloved classic is proof that no amount of CGI or screaming children can summon the soul of a movie that already did it better three decades ago.
This “modern reimagining” of Poltergeist doesn’t so much update the story as it does reboot it by accident. It’s like watching a ghost story filtered through a corporate PowerPoint presentation: polished, pointless, and utterly dead inside.
The Bowen Family: Blandly Doomed
The film swaps out the Freelings for the Bowens, a middle-class family who move into a house that’s definitely not haunted, except for all the corpses buried under it. Sam Rockwell plays Eric Bowen, a dad whose performance suggests he wandered in from another, better movie and decided to stay because the catering was free. Rosemarie DeWitt, as mom Amy, tries her best to show concern while also clearly thinking about her next role.
Their three kids are walking plot devices: moody teen Kendra (Saxon Sharbino), nervous middle child Griffin (Kyle Catlett), and adorable psychic toddler Madison (Kennedi Clements), who spends half the film talking to static and the other half being kidnapped by it.
In short: it’s a perfectly ordinary family—if by ordinary you mean “utterly unmemorable and written by a haunted toaster.”
The Setup: New House, Same Mistakes
The Bowens move into their new suburban dream home, which conveniently happens to be built on a former cemetery. The realtor assures them all the bodies were relocated, which in horror movie terms means “LOL, no they weren’t.”
Almost immediately, weird stuff starts happening. Lights flicker, electronics misbehave, and creepy clown dolls appear out of nowhere like they’re multiplying out of spite. Madison begins talking to unseen voices through the TV static (because 2015 kids definitely watch static on flat screens, right?).
Then, she whispers the immortal line: “They’re here.”
Except this time, it lands with all the emotional weight of an Amazon Alexa alert.
CGI: The True Terror
The original Poltergeist scared people with subtlety—chairs stacking themselves, whispers from beyond, and a terrifying sense of the unseen. This remake replaces all that with digital nonsense so overdone it might as well have been sponsored by Industrial Light & Dullness.
There’s a haunted tree that looks like it was rendered in 2007, a ghost dimension that resembles a screensaver, and skeletons that seem to be auditioning for a Halloween store ad. Everything’s glossy, loud, and utterly without atmosphere.
It’s as if the film is terrified the audience will forget it’s a modern horror, so it throws CGI at every shadow until there’s nothing left to actually be afraid of.
If the 1982 film whispered, this one screams directly into your face — and somehow still manages to be boring.
Sam Rockwell Deserves an Exorcism
Let’s talk about the only truly haunting thing in this movie: watching Sam Rockwell try to act interested.
Rockwell is one of those rare actors who can make even bad material watchable, but here he looks trapped — like he signed the contract during a full moon and realized too late that it was cursed. His performance oscillates between manic sarcasm and “please get me out of this house,” which might actually make him the most relatable character in the film.
Rosemarie DeWitt does her best as the perpetually anxious mom, though her main job seems to be staring at televisions and whispering her daughter’s name like she’s calling for a lost cat. The children do fine — especially little Madison, whose innocent curiosity almost makes you forget the dialogue she’s given sounds like it was generated by ChatGPT’s less talented cousin.
And then there’s Jared Harris as Carrigan Burke, the paranormal expert. Harris delivers his lines in a gravelly Irish accent so thick you could mine it for gold. He’s supposed to be a blend of ghost hunter and TV medium, but he ends up sounding like he wandered in from a pub documentary on the History Channel.
The Script: Written by Ghosts, Probably
David Lindsay-Abaire, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, wrote the screenplay. Yes, you read that correctly: a man once celebrated for Rabbit Hole wrote this. Somewhere, his Pulitzer probably rattled on a shelf in protest.
The dialogue feels like it was written by people who’d only ever seen horror movies in passing. Characters explain things we already know (“It’s like… they’re inside the TV!”) and deliver emotional lines like they’re reading grocery lists.
Every jump scare is telegraphed from a mile away — the kind of “boo!” moments that make you wish someone would actually boo from the audience.
The scariest part of Poltergeist (2015) isn’t the ghosts; it’s realizing how much of your life you’re wasting watching it.
The Ghost Dimension (Now With Wi-Fi!)
When Madison gets pulled into the ghost dimension, it’s supposed to be this terrifying parallel world of the dead. Instead, it looks like a leftover set from Spy Kids 3D. Floating CGI skeletons drift through green mist, occasionally roaring because that’s what bad visual effects do when they have nothing to say.
Gone is the eerie, unseen mystery of the original — the dread that something awful lurked just out of sight. Here, we get to see everything, which just proves that some horrors are better left imagined.
It’s not “otherworldly.” It’s just “under-rendered.”
A Haunting by Committee
The film reeks of studio interference. It’s too polished to be gritty, too sanitized to be scary, and too short to build tension. It’s like watching a haunted house designed by IKEA: all sleek surfaces, no soul.
Even Sam Raimi’s involvement feels like a cruel joke. You keep waiting for some spark of his manic, inventive energy — a wild camera move, a wink at the audience — but none ever comes. It’s as though Raimi’s name was conjured in a seance and the producers just slapped it on the poster for legitimacy.
“They’re Gone” — And So Is the Magic
When the house finally implodes in a swirl of CGI and glowing lights, it’s not scary. It’s not even cathartic. It’s just noisy. The Bowens survive, their daughter is fine, and the film ends with a half-hearted joke about house-hunting, as though the preceding nightmare were just a minor inconvenience.
The original left you unsettled — shaken by its mix of family warmth and supernatural terror. This one leaves you wondering if you left the oven on.
The Real Curse of Poltergeist (2015)
They say the original Poltergeist was cursed. If so, the curse apparently skipped 1982 and hit this movie instead. Everything here feels wrong — not cursed in a supernatural way, but cursed by indifference.
It’s the horror equivalent of a photocopy of a photocopy: faded, smudged, and missing whatever made the first image beautiful.
Final Thoughts: Poltergeist (2015) — Ghosts of Better Films
Gil Kenan’s remake is what happens when you dig up a classic, shake the dust off, and then accidentally bury it alive again under CGI sludge and weak dialogue. It’s not offensively bad — just depressingly unnecessary.
The original film asked us to fear the unknown. The remake reminds us to fear remakes.
Final Verdict: 1.5 out of 5 haunted TVs — one for Sam Rockwell’s paycheck, half for nostalgia, and zero for originality.
“They’re here”? More like, “They’re still here? Why?”
