Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) Review

 "They're back!"

-Carol Anne Freeling

A year after the events of the first film, the Freeling family is trying to move on with their lives.  Unfortunately, the evil spirits are not so willing to let Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke) go.  Their leader, Kane (Julian Beck), tracks down the Freeling's to their new home to take Carol Anne back.

What Works:

Most of the cast from the first film returns, which I'm very happy about.  I love Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams as the Freeling parents and they have great chemistry.  Heather O'Rourke is just incredible and any time Carol Anne is scared or sad, it devastates your emotions.

The Beast from the last film takes human form this time around as Kane.  Julian Beck does a fantastic job in the role and is incredibly creepy.  His scenes all made my skin crawl.  I only wish he had more screen time.

Finally, there are some cool special effects.  The best is the worm that possesses Steve.  It's utterly disgusting.  And the braces that attack Robbie (Oliver Robbins) are also great.

What Sucks:

Man, this script is a mess.  It feels like they threw everything at the wall and very little stuck.  This sequel adds in that all of the women in JoBeth's line are psychic.  This makes enough sense for Carol Anne and it's a decent reason for why she was targeted, but it really doesn't add much to the film.  They don't do anything with it.  Even worse is that JoBeth herself is apparently psychic, which makes zero sense and doesn't matter to the narrative at all. 

This movie sidelines arguably the most iconic character from the series in Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) and I have no idea why.  She has about 5 scenes where she does basically nothing.  You could have taken her out of the film and it would change nothing, but why would you want to take her out of the film!?  She's great!  Give her more to do!

Instead of Tangina, we get her colleague, Taylor (Will Sampson), who is the extreme cliché of the mystical Native American.  Taylor is very poorly used.  In the first film, we learn alongside the Freeling's about what is happening as the more experienced characters explain.  Taylor is the only one around this time, but he does a piss-poor job of explaining.  He's intentionally vague and peace's out of movie for awhile for no good reason.  It's like the writers didn't have a good explanation for anything in the film and so they had Taylor just talk about nothing.

The plot of this movie is that Kane is trying to get inside the house.  That's established within the first 35 minutes.  Then the story is very stagnant until the climax.  If you want to do a movie about ghosts trying to get inside a house, than do it!  Make it a movie that takes place over one night.  The Freeling's have to hold out for a couple hours as they wait for their psychic backup to arrive.  That's a movie!  This one just spins in place for a while until we get to the end.

Finally, the 3rd act is absolute crap.  The Freeling's actually go to the ghost dimension and take the audience with them.  We didn't need this.  We never saw it in the last film and that made it more effective.  They left it to our imagination.  It was never going to live up to what we built up in our minds, but man, it looks terrible.  The climatic fight is beyond lame and leads us to the utterly stupid ending where Steve gives his car to Taylor for some reason.  I've seen a lot of stupid endings in my time, but this one is near the top.

Verdict:

While it's fun to have the Freeling family back, there are some good special effects, and the introduction of Kane is great, this is a pretty terrible sequel.  The script is a mess, almost nothing makes sense, Tangina is sidelined and her replacement doesn't hold a candle to her, and the 3rd act is a disaster.

 3/10: Really Bad