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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spells &amp; Karma" data-source="post: 390494" data-attributes="member: 23">Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.wonderhowto.com%2Fimg%2F90%2F10%2F63404952346460%2F0%2Fpoltergeist-ii-other-side.w1456.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=c616f97dca3aeaa6c37e0ea6273a56eda38ded5151eec94eccd07137819b4dbe&ipo=images" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> I don't think I've seen this before, but I couldn't swear to it. Almost nothing felt familiar as I watched, though the morning after watching I've realised that the scene of Carol Anne speaking to her grandmother on the toy phone wasn't unfamiliar. Expectations were fairly low for this one... as would be the case for almost every sequel of the era. In many ways it's exactly what you'd expect. It's nice to see most of the core cast of the original film returning, but I don't recall the older daughter even being  mentioned (actress Dominique Duane had been murdered by her boyfriend months after the original's release). They do good work with so-so material. The most noticeable absences are offscreen. There's no Tobe Hooper and no Steven Spielberg, whose touches are most certainly missing. This is almost balanced by the return of Jerry Goldsmith whose score is impressive (even that, though, got a bit too boisterous in the last act as it matched the onscreen action). While the film is essentially more of the same, where it falls down compares with the original is the "prosaic suburbia" motif (a favourite of Spielberg) which opened the first film. After the events of the first film, the family is no longer the people down the road, and so the starting point is on a very different footing. And while it tries for an arc and a buildup, it's simply missing that essential sense of journey from our world to the other side. It's very effects-heavy and this is not always a saving grace in a film that's almost forty years old. By the standards of the time they're impressive, and some certainly look expensive, but sometimes less is more. H.R. Giger is credited, but apparently hated what was done with his designs by the Hollywood team. There are shades of John Carpenter's remake of The Thing in some of these, but most of it is ultimately quite forgettable. It's better and has more class than most of its Eighties horror sequel brethren. But at the end of the day, it's still an Eighties horror sequel. </blockquote>

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