New On Netflix: Poltergeist III

[BoxTitle]Poltergeist III[/BoxTitle] [Trailer]http://youtu.be/mvUkO97hnhg[/Trailer] [Netflix] [NetflixAdd id="70209241"/] [NetflixWatch id="70209241"/]

“I’ve coooome for the…” — wait a minute, this isn’t the one with that line. This is the one where everyone screams “CAROL ANNE!!” at the top of their lungs over and over until you’ve gone good and mad by about 20 minutes in. Poltergeist III finds poor little Carol Anne transplanted to Chicago, where she lives with her aunt and uncle (Nancy Allen and Tom Skerritt) in a high-rise and is poked and prodded by a child psychiatrist (Richard Fire) who’s convinced that the kid simply imagined the events of the first two films. All this sharing of feelings brings back the demonic Kane from limbo, and he begins raising hell and cackling away once again. A halfway decent effort, considering the production had about one-tenth of the budget of its predecessors; some of the mirror work is impressive (and unsettling), and the big-city setting makes for an interesting contrast to the isolated suburbia of the first two chapters. However, the script is pure wretchedness, and someone kind of forgot to give it all an ending, at least one that, you know, lets us know just what in the hell happened to Lara Flynn Boyle’s boyfriend. Heather O’Rourke and old faithful Zelda Rubinstein were the only original cast members to return for this dissatisfying wrap-up; O’Rourke died four months before the film was released in June 1988, which made everyone realize that it was time to close (or, rather, slam) the door on this probably-cursed franchise.