Poltergeist II: The Other Side

(1986) ***1/2

Look, I've watched Poltergeist II many times (that's just something that comes with being a child of '80s cable television; we rewatched everything). I've read all the reviews. I hear and understand everything that all of the critics don't like about this, and by and large I agree. This sequel didn't need to be made. The FX were already two years out of date. Ghostbusters looks better and came out in '84 and you could even make the argument that the first Poltergeist, which came out in '82, and which channeled its budget into a smaller scale, itself looks superior to this. HR Giger himself, who designed the FX, claimed in interviews to be disappointed in the results, and wished he'd opted to be on set to supervise directly.

And still, I don't care about any of that stuff because Julian Beck is so freaking great as Kane, it more than makes up for anything about Poltergeist II that doesn't work.

Weird thing is, he doesn't actually do much more than talk, and chuckle, and smile through a mouth impossibly full of teeth. But even when he's smiling, he projects an energy that makes you think probably that all the plants on the block he just came from right before he walked up your walkway are dying. Merely on physical attributes alone, the man oozes malice on a level few horror movie villains have ever matched. 

So there he is on the Freeling doorstep, already having passively made both the Freeling kids and mom Diane even the dog feel like they need to go hide somewhere, and in two minutes alone with dad Steve, he unbuckles everything in Steve's mind that he hopes nobody else can see.

        Kane: What you fear is that you're not man enough to hold this family together.

        Steve: <thunderstruck> H-how do you know?

        Kane: Because...I'm *smart*. And I'm your friend. And I know what you're thinking.

And now that I'm playing all this out in my memory, I'm going back up to the top of the review and changing my star rating from 3 to 3.5. Because setting aside whether or not this sequel "has no reason for existing beyond the desire to duplicate a financial success", as critic Nina Darnton of the NY Times put it, if we're going to agree to be put under the magic spell of an original film, we must also agree that anyone who survives Part I had a life that came after it. For better or worse, Poltergeist II is the story that came after, and at the very least the characters here all behave like they just experienced real metaphysical trauma. I was too young to pick up on this sort of thing when I was watching this as an 8 year old, but now as an adult with a lot of friends who are fathers, I can appreciate how much pressure he must be placing on himself to hide how scared he was when the monsters came into his house a year earlier. 

Of course he'd be an alcoholic. Of course he'd mock the weird Indian guy shaking his medicine bag and dancing around the Freeling's new house (and by the way, scoff along with him if you'd like, but Will Sampson, whom you'd recognize as The Chief from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, frikkin kills in this too). And of course he'd be easy prey for the serpent-tongued Reverend on his doorstep demanding to be let inside. 

Blame the studio for forcing an unworthy sequel, blame HR Giger for not being there to make sure Brian Gibson and his crew weren't fucking up all the lovely FX mockup art. But writers Michael Grais and Mark Victor, and the entire returning cast from Poltergeist absolutely deserve credit for taking the time to ask themselves how real people would react to the horrors of living in two consecutive homes sitting on top of a doorway to hell.

As a bonus for getting through this review, here's a terribly useful .gif I made. Use it for good or evil. I don't care. I'm proud of it either way.