Over at Alex on Film I’ve posted my notes on Poltergeist (1982) and its 2015 remake.

In general, these twenty-first century remakes of horror classics from the ’70s and ’80s have been terrible. The 2015 version of Poltergeist is pretty bad too, but . . . it’s better than the original. I’m honestly shocked at how many people still think the Tobe Hooper/Steven Speilberg version was any good. I didn’t like it much when it first came out, and re-watching it (for what I think was the first time in thirty-plus years) I thought it was even worse. It’s downright laughably bad.

Is it just that people remember it as being good and are holding on to some vision of it that imprinted on them when they were children? That happens a lot, not just with movies we’ve seen but books that we’ve read decades ago and never returned to. In the case of Poltergeist, I’d advise anyone with fond memories of the original not to go back.