Watch Poltergeist II: The Other Side For Free

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Surprisingly incoherent and boring

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

This disappointing follow-up to the classic POLTERGEIST ('82) rehashes a boring plot which in this case substitutes humour and sentimentalising in place of thrills and chills. Although the high budget means that there are lots of special effects (most of them tacky by today's standards), once again little thought is gone into the story itself, so in the end it's just one "shock" or "scare" after another. This does not a good film make.The film was made four years after the original, but bizarrely is set just one year after the events of that film. Thus, we are expected to believe that the son has grown amazingly from a ten year old to a fourteen year old in that time - I think not. What makes this film so bad is the bad acting of the cast members, most of whom return from the first (aside from the teenage daughter). Most of them were passable in the first film, but they go way over the top here. JoBeth Williams has a ridiculous '80s hairstyle and is totally forgettable in her whinging, irritating role. Craig T. Nelson, on the other hand, goes totally over the top and crazy at regular points, which is pretty funny actually. Oliver Robins has one major scene and that's it, while Heather O'Rourke's cuteness and creepiness had almost totally worn off by now.Zelda Rubinstein also returns but is relegated to a cameo, "stand back and watch" type role. Also turning up are Will Sampson as a useless Native American "advisor" and Geraldine Fitzgerald as an impossibly friendly grandmother. However, the film's biggest coup is in the casting of Julian Beck (who looks like an old version of Christopher Walken) as the evil preacher, who manages to make his evil role really creepy and scary and is by far the best thing in this film. It's just a shame that he died halfway through production and thus vanishes from the proceedings towards the end.Although this film fails as a whole, there are a smattering of fun scenes which stop it from being totally worthless. A couple of slimy monsters turn up (one comes out of Nelson's mouth, the other just appears as a huge, slithering tentacled mess like something out of Lovecraft's worst nightmares) and are good value for money. Eagle-eyed viewers will notice a few connected names in the crew; firstly effects man Steve Johnson (one of the big SFX guys in the '80s) who made the creatures, secondly H.R. Giger being credited for the "designs" of the monsters, and who probably included the Lovecraftian element, and thirdly Screaming Mad George as a hired hand. These factors combine to make the monsters quite cool, although sadly they are seen only briefly.Another good scare has a chainsaw levitating into the air before attacking the family (sheltering inside a car). This has some great special effects which make it a moment to remember. Sadly, another scene in which Robins' brace comes to life and tries to smother him is laughably bad, but original, it has to be said. This time around, a plastic pink toy telephone acts as Carol Anne's "link" to the other side, but not much is made of this plot device. The rotted corpses from the first film also pop up occasionally (out of cupboards, the ground, etc.) but don't make a lot of impact.Probably the worst bit of this film is the ending, which rips off an effective scene in the first film but ruins it by showing everything. Thus we get to watch the family members float around an animated world in scenes which look incredibly fake and cheesy. The low point occurs when we see Carol Anne floating around, symbolised as an angel, or when she gets rescued by the ghost of her grandmother - a moment so bursting with sugary sentiment that I was very close to being physically sick. In the end, nobody dies either, not even the dog! These things make POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE a film which is just too family-orientated, and is in desperate need of more of the nastiness of the first film.

The first movie of course is one of the best horror-terror movies of all time.The movie scare to they all generation of the 80's and still scare new generations.That what happen because 2 important things:Tobe Hopper and Steven Spielberg. This time this masterminds are not comeback and you can see the result of that.The movie simply don't have soul,don't have the magic of the first movie,don't have the scares,the terror,the chemistry,the emotion,the mystery nothing of the original movie.This movie feels like a chapter of THE TWILIGHT ZONE of the 80's (i see better chapter in the series than this movie) so this nothing great or special of this movie that deserves your attention.Believe you not lost something not see this movie...If you wanna see a good sequel of the 80's see FRIGHT NIGHT 2,CHILD PLAY 2,ALIENS to say some movies.

PoPoltergeist II is just as good as its predecessor.This time a preacher named Henry Kane starts to harass the Freelings and they must once again try to save themselves. Returning is Craig T. Nelson as Steve, JoBeth Williams as Diane, Heather O'Rourke as Carol Anne, Oliver Robins as Robbie, and Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina. New characters are Julian Beck as Kane, the evil preacher and Will Sampson as Taylor, who comes to help the Freelings. As the movie progresses, the Freelings soon discover the terrible link between Kane and the Beast.The acting is great. Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams give flawless performances, just like the last time. Julian Beck flawlessly gives Kane an air of creepiness. Heather O'Rourke gives another flawless performance of her own. Will Sampson does very good as Taylor.The special effects are perfect. They look just as amazing as what we saw in the original movie, albeit in a different way.The script is perfect. Mark Victor and Michael Grais expand on Poltergeist (1982) very well, providing a lot of insight into the original movie.Poltergeist II matches its predecessor because it still manages to capture the magic of the original.

"Poltergeist II: The Other Side" is sound and fury signifying nothing, a good-looking special effects show that contains no less than a flying chainsaw, a set of killer braces and a creature excised from the human body through vomiting, yet it can't find a cohesive foothold to string any of those ideas together. Then again perhaps they couldn't. How exactly do you build a narrative that leads to killer braces? It isn't exactly news to report that "Poltergeist II: The Other Side" is a sequel to the hit 1982 thriller, but the surprising news is that this movie does everything wrong that the original film got right. Like "The Exorcist", key to the success of "Poltergeist" was that the characters were so grounded in reality that when the supernatural stuff started to happen, it leant the effects a degree of credibility. This sequel goes the other way around so we feel the effects but the characters are simply there to be knocked around.That's too bad because "Poltergeist" is one of the rare horror films that actually earns the right to a sequel by virtue of ending on a note so melodramatic that we might have been disappointed if someone didn't find a way to get that family out of their funk. That film, you will recall, ended with the Freeling family fleeing their house as dead bodies popped out of the ground before the house was sucked into oblivion. The family, now homeless, checked into the Holiday Inn.As much as "Poltergeist II: The Other Side" is valid enough to continue their story, it does not, however, live up to the original. The story is silly and the characters feel like cardboard cut-outs, with witty little jokey dialogue, when it isn't laced with supernatural hoo-ha. The supernatural stuff in the original was mounted on a semi-plausible idea: their house was mounted on the grounds of a relocated cemetery. Here there's some nonsense about protection from evil forces and the protective force of the family bond. This is filtered through Indian mystical nonsense and something about a 200 year old religious sect that wants Carol Anne's life force back on "the other side". Whatever.The story picks up a year later, which is a problem because the two movies were produced four years apart. That means that the little blonde Carol Anne, who was five years-old in the original is six now and played by Heather O'Rourke, who is actually nine. That gives us the agonizing sight of watching a nine year-old playing a six-year old. Why not just set the movie four years later? Anyway, the story deals once again with the Freeling family, Dad Steve (Craig T. Nelson), Mom Diane (JoBeth Williams), and the kids Robbie (Oliver Robins) and Carol Anne. The teenage daughter Dana is absent here and never mentioned even in dialogue. They have moved in with Grandma (Geraldine Fitzgerald) after their house was sucked into oblivion. Naturally, Dad refuses to buy a TV.The hole where their house once stood is under investigation by the medium Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubenstein) and a Native American mystic named Taylor (Will Sampson) because "there's a presence." What that "presence" is steps on the premise of the original film. In the earlier film, it was explained that a real estate company made a strange decision to uproot the cemetery without moving the bodies.Now we learn that a 19th century cult sealed itself inside a cave at the urging of an evil minister named Henry Kane. Kane is alive and well and stalking around trying to capture little Carol Anne and take her back to the other side. It is hard to figure out exactly what Kane is, whether he's a spirit or some kind of satanic manifestation. We never know. There's some suggestion that he can manifest himself into a different forms but that is never really explained either. This movie is one long series of loose-ends.The movie is also one long series of special effects for their own sake. Hardly a scene in this movie isn't crafted without one. The back half of the movie is a strange venture into the mystical world that seems to be neither here nor there. Somehow the family does battle with the forces of evil by using their strong family lifeforce - nevermind the fact that one of their numbers, 17 year-old, Dana is missing. Somehow they enter the netherworld through a multi-colored Indian campfire, and I was never completely sure how they got out. I suppose I wasn't supposed to ask. It's a sad day when the only way to enjoy a movie is to stop questioning its overwhelming gaps in logic.The one thing that does work here is the performance of Julian Beck as Henry Kane. Dressed in the vestments of an 19th century minister, his face is skeletal with large teeth bared over curled lips. His voice is slippery and unnerving. There is something about his presence that, in a better movie, could have really come to something. He shows signs of what the movie could have been. More priest and less family bonding might have helped. You know what would have been a great sequel? This family in therapy.