Poltergeist 2: The Other Side (1986) - Review

The original Poltergeist from 1982 is a horror classic that still holds up incredibly well today. The direction, acting, practical and special effects, and storytelling techniques all work well to the film’s benefit. Like all good things, it got a couple of sequels as well as a remake, which, up until this year, I have never seen. Thus, with the return to DagonDogs in October, it’s time to branch out on my horror tree of films and see what I’ve been missing all these years. From what I can tell so far, not much.

Pros

Many of the actors from the first film return
Some practical effects still look good
Creepy villain

Cons

Pacing is abysmal
Weird characterization of established characters that feels unnecessary and out of place
Plot is far less interesting
Some special effects are not so good
Looks and feels a lot cheaper

Plot & Thoughts

The Freeling family from the first film has moved into the home of Diane’s Mother, Jess (Geraldine Fitzgerald). Diane (JoBeth Williams) and Steve (Craig T. Nelson) are going a little stir-crazy and want to get back on their feet, having lost their home and all their equity at the end of the first movie when it got sucked into another dimension. Obviously, insurance companies are not going to buy the “my house warped through a galactic butthole created by ghosts” excuse. So, they lost a ton of money and are struggling to make ends meet.

That’s relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of what the film is actually about, but Poltergeist 2 wants to focus on the mundane details and events of their lives as though we don’t know these characters already. After an extended period of time in which nothing interesting happens, Jess dies suddenly and the family starts being stalked by a mysterious man in black named Kane (Julian Beck). In addition, they start renting out their backyard for free to a Native American named Taylor (Will Sampson) who is trying to protect them from the evil spirits that seem to surround Kane.

It turns out that the poltergeist from the previous movie that was so vengeful towards the Freelings wasn’t actually the spirits of deceased Indians, but the spirits of a congregation who had followed Kane into a cavern and died a century ago, as well as Kane himself. After having made contact with them, he realized that their youngest daughter, Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) was a clairvoyant. This means she could be used as a vessel to transport the soul, and thus, Kane was determined to follow them and possess her. So, even though the family moved to a new home, they were being haunted, once again.

This movie is weird and bad. It’s not an atrocious wreck that makes no sense like The Exorcist 2, but there are a lot of issues I have with it. First of all, at no point does the film acknowledge the absence of Dana Freeling from the first movie, which was played by Dominique Dunne. The actress was tragically killed by her ex-boyfriend shortly after the original Poltergeist was released, so perhaps the writers and director didn’t feel right trying to cast someone else in the role. However, there were plenty of excuses they could have used like “she’s in summer camp” or “she’s gone to college” to cover up the fact that she was not present in the film, instead of just pretending like she never existed—that’s in the version I saw anyway. According to IMDB, there was a scene that was written to do exactly this, but it was never filmed. They may have chosen to do this out of respect for the actress and her family, but it seemed stranger and less respectful to pretend like she never existed. I don’t know; make your own judgment there, I guess.

Regardless, that’s not my main problem with Poltergeist 2. I think that the film moves too slowly for no reason and doesn’t ever accomplish building tension in a meaningful way. It spends so much time establishing characters who don’t need to be established and less time on characters we don’t know. Instead of spending time telling us about how Steve wants to sell vacuums again, there could have been more opportunities to show Kane stalking about to build him up a bit more. Or, more time with Taylor investigating the location of the family’s old home so that we didn’t need to do an exposition dump towards the middle/end of the movie, would have been nice too. It, at least, would have felt like something was being accomplished in the plot or trying to scare us in some way.

Instead of meaningful scares or building tension, the film opts for the lame and obvious jump scares of someone looking in a mirror, looking away, and then looking back at people in masks. The end is where some of the better practical effects take place, which is obviously where most of the budget was spent. The rest of the film gives off a “cheap” quality, because all the other scares are weak, look bad, or take place on dull sets. This is a bit odd, as the budget for this movie was almost double that of the first, but I guess the quality and skill of the crew were not quite as impressive as before.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

Despite some big names being associated with it, a majority of the cast returning, and a bigger budget, Poltergeist 2 is a weak sequel. It spends too much time doing nothing interesting and lacks much impact or tension to make it even remotely as scary as the first film. I’m assuming that it only goes downhill from here.

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