Poltergeist scares up few thrills

When horror-thriller movies are a dime a dozen, it takes a shiny penny to stand out in the roll. A dull Poltergeist doesn’t stack up to recent spooky spools but does impart a few valuable life (and afterlife) lessons.

Eric Bowen (Sam Rockwell) loses his job, forcing his family to downsize to a seedy neighborhood. Their real estate agent has conveniently neglected to tell them their house was built over an old cemetery. Although officials relocated the bodies, the souls were left behind and are now possessing—can I get an “amen” here?—the Bowen children’s smartphones and video game consoles.

Six-year-old Maddy (Kennedi Clements) places her hands on the 50-inch flat screen TV and makes a connection with the poltergeists. (In case you’re wondering, ghosts simply appear, but poltergeists violently move stuff around.) Dad and Mom (Rosemarie DeWitt) return from a night out to learn the poltergeists have pulled Maddy through a closet into their other-realm.

Certain the police won’t believe their story, the family turns to Dr. Brooke Powell (Jane Adams), a professor in the department of paranormal research at a local university. The high-tech ghoul gadgets she and her graduate assistants use are no match for the spirits’ powers, so she calls in her big gun and ex-husband, Carrigan Burke (Jared Harris), the host of a popular haunted house reality TV series.

At times, Poltergeist’s adult cast members seem barely able to stifle sneers. Perhaps they believed the movie was supposed to be a parody. Grabby tree branches, a baseball with more eerie movement than the one that eluded Bill Buckner, and a box full of scowling clowns prove Steven Spielberg, who co-wrote the screenplay of the 1982 original, skipped the remake.

That being said, Poltergeist (rated PG-13 for intense frightening sequences, brief suggestive material, and some language) teaches three lessons. One: If you lose your job, the toy clown manufacturing industry offers guaranteed employment. Two: Academia and reality TV are more closely wedded than you might think. Three: Before you sign on the dotted line, make sure the corpses beneath your basement have been properly disinterred and reburied elsewhere. As any decent realtor will tell you, the key to a successful home purchase is relocation, relocation, relocation.