POLTERGEIST

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jared Harris

Writer: David Lindsay-Abaire

Director: Gil Kenan

A reboot/remake/re-imagining (take your pick) of the 1982 original, Gil Kenan's film begins with the Bowen family relocating to a cheaper home after dad Eric (Rockwell) loses his job. None of the aspirational dream home trappings of its predecessor, this is the austerity version of Poltergeist. We're all in this together, folks, and that includes moving to haunted housing estates. Joking aside, I wish this movie was full of nice little touches such as that. As it is, it begins with promise but ultimately delivers little more than a workmanlike horror outing.

Anyway, the Bowen's new home turns out to have more electrical problems than an entire series of Watchdog but this isn't a case of dodgy wiring, it's because their place has been built over a cemetery and there's a whole army of disturbed spirits trying to find a conduit to a plane where they can rest in peace. After initially putting their son Griffin's concerns down to the fact that he's just a kid with issues, his parents take a bit more notice when the spirits swipe their youngest daughter (Kennedi Clements) Madison.

As the Bowen's troubled but smart son Griffin, Kyle Catlett puts in a rather good performance and he handles quite a large role extremely well. Clements, on the other hand, comes off a bit "stage school kid" in the overacting stakes as she's befriended, then kidnapped, then generally menaced by increasingly ropey CGI spooks. Jared Harris is landed with something of a pantomime part as the paranormal investigator who turns up in the second half to kick some spirit arse but the clips of his "Most Haunted"-style TV show are quite amusing and at least he's allowed to play it up and enjoy himself. Poor old Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt have no such opportunities and it's only because of their innate likeability that they even register here. More often than not, the cast generally plays second fiddle to the jump scares and special (sometimes not so special) effects.

Yes, we're in the realm of the "jump scare" again. There's quite a number of them in this movie and, as you'd expect, some land and some don't. Very early on, the film jettisons any pretence of attempting to build any sort of tension in favour of having things fall out/fall on/jump on/grab unsuspecting characters, often with a loud crash of music on the soundtrack. It's cheap, it's unnecessary, it's lazy and it's ultimately wearing. There's the odd moment where the film hints that it could have been something much more chilling but within a few seconds we're back to creeping along corridors and waiting for something to leap at the screen. Most of it will linger in the memory about as long as....do you know what, I already forgot the moment I was going to tell you about.

So is it a total waste of time? Actually, no. It's a fairground ride of a movie and if you go in expecting to jump and shriek in all the expected places you might very well get a kick out of it. It's competently made and it doesn't slavishly stick to the original, it even has a couple of pleasing plot wrinkles of its own. As a horror movie, however, it's totally lacking in real scares (trading much more in "startles") and it makes the mistake of not developing the characters sufficiently before plunging them into the ghostly mayhem so it's hard to become properly engaged in their plight.

My advice? If you're only going to watch one movie called "Poltergeist", see the original.

Okay, the bit with the clowns is pretty good, I'll give it that.