This movie might just be a remake, but it's not. In fact, it seems to have taken very little from its predecessors in title. The script is banal: as it has happened in thousands of films before, a family with children moves to a new house, acquiring without knowing the (not very encouraging) possibility of being frightened by an endless series of ghosts. Of course, children will be the preferred target of these ghosts, be it by the ingenuity or the effect that this can provoke in the public. Nothing new here. Equally unoriginal (we've seen something similar in "Insidious" or "The Conjuring"), the wardrobe in the girl's room is the most active place, eventually "devouring" one of the children. I will not talk more about what happens in this movie so I will not spoil. I just wanted to demonstrate that the film is a succession of cliches.
Gil Kenan's direction proved to be poor, fragile and did not seem to have been able to ask for the best of the actors and staff members. A lazy direction, which is content with the medium without pursuing excellence. The scares are scarce and predictable: objects that jump towards the display, snoring, scary noises and lights. I can say that I never felt truly frightened while watching the film. About the actors what can be said is that they seem to me to have tried to fulfill their role well, but they were not directed effectively. Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt fulfilled their roles, while the children (especially Kennedi Clements and Kyle Catlett) seem to have fully lived up to what was asked of them. Jared Harris and Jane Adams do not seem to have been good choices, a complete casting error.
This film is a far cry from the quality of the Poltergeist of the 1980s, and I do not know if it's honest to relate these films to this movie. This seems a bit too ambitious, even though they share the same name. Despite this, I have the feeling that it would have been better with a more creative script and a more demanding and skillful director.
