I don't get the hate for this movie

Well it's understandable and it's the original's fault... it had no business being that good and it has exposed all of its sequel as inferior.

With that said, I think overall, this movie balances out as it had some very good creative touches to it:

The Good:

The mirror idea and effects are great IMO. The scene where Carol Anne touches the mirror and her fingers grab her hand and her deteriorating reflection says “We’re back” is ingenious and is one of my favorite scenes ever. I also liked how some of the action in the mirror doesn’t mirror the characters real life. The scene when Trish and Bruce are walking down the hall and the doors they pass open revealing Kane (in the mirror) is trippy as is the scene when Kane reenters and shuts the doors as Donna leave Carole Anne alone in the apartment.

The other part that creeped me out is just before the scene above (fingers poking through the mirror) when Carole Anne is hesitantly walking towards her bedroom window… if you look closely at her reflection in the mirror, Kane is waiting for her and when she sits in front of the window, her reflection is sitting directly in front of Kane and when Carole Anne touches the window with her palms, her reflection does this action first. Again, creepy.

The city locale is another bonus.

Kane’s constant transformation into Carole Anne is great. I loved the scenes where we see this little girl with the face of an old hag. It terrified me when I saw this in the theatres back in 1988. I just wish they would have had more scenes utilizing the good make up.

The frozen landscapes theme is also interesting: The frozen swimming pool, the frozen storage rooms and bedrooms and the crawling mist that seems to follow Carole Anne everywhere.

I also liked the idea of Kane returning a Donna and Scott imposter to fool the others. The idea was interesting, I just wished it was better executed.

And the mechanical effect I thought were great. In this day and age when we have the over-use of CGI, I find these effects a refreshing change because at least the effects in this film were three dimensional and used creative camera angles and special choreography to achieve some of the effects.

The Bad:

Everyone’s complaint about the overuse of the name “Carole Anne” is the biggie. I am surprised this was not noticed by anyone.

The constant use of Kane’s voice over. I did not mind this too much but they should have omitted his “We need you to lead us into the light” as this contradicts the previous 2 films.

The terrible re-shot ending. I say re-shot because there are pictures of the original ending (which looked way better) and because an article released the day after O’Rourke’s death in 1988 stated that Poltergeist III “finished filming in Chicago last June and is scheduled to be released this summer”. The terrible ending looks rushed, is anti-climactic and in a way insulting as any good horror writer would have been able to think of a better ending. The ending they gave us looks as if the makers threw in the towel, which they did and Mr. Sherman could have thought up a better ending.

Some of the acting is uninspired. I love Nancy Allen but her performance here was uneven.

With all of that said, P3 is definitely inferior to the more polished, more thrilling and classic original but IMO the good outweighs the bad but it’s sometimes difficult not to notice the films shortcomings and it’s even more frustrating considering that they could have easily been remedied had more care gone into the project. But I still love this movie and re-watch it constantly.

I don't quite share the sentiments of those who say P3 was a terrible movie.

I would agree that both of the sequels aren't quite up to snuff compared to the original, although for me it's not a case of P2 being any better or worse than P3.

Honestly, even having the bulk of the cast from the first Poltergeist returning for the first sequel didn't make that venture more compelling than the massive change of cast members and settings P3 settled on.

What I would say is that P3 did decide to make the Carole Anne character the focal point of the story...it's difficult to ascertain exactly when Heather died in comparison to how much footage of her had been shot and what ended up in the movie. When I watch it, it becomes apparent that as the film winds on less and less of Heather is seen, or at least less and less of her face is seen. We get fleeting, distant shots of the Carole Anne figure running away from Skerrit and Allen, and the second to last shot of the film which was obviously a double. It makes me wonder how extensive the reshots following her death were, and how much her death put the production into a bind re: the story centered around her, but how were they able to proceed without looking like they were exploiting her death? I mean, for large chunks of the last 15 minutes of the flick it was the Tom and Nancy show, with Heather as a disembodied presence at best. Was this a function of the original script intent, or a result of the reshoots?

I don't either. It pales in comparison to the first, but I still had some fun with it. It was certainly a lot more enjoyable than the snooze-fest that was the first sequel. 6/10

[deleted]

I'm going to have to agree to disagree.

As flawed as Poltergeist II is, I found it to be a decent-enough film and a fun sequel on the whole. Yes, it's pacing is uneven, and it doesn't quite capture that feeling of magic that the original had, but I found it's horror set-pieces to generally be quite effective, and I appreciated the attempt to do something that expanded the mythology and do something slightly different with the material, through the whole spiritual-warrior and clairvoyant angles.

In comparison, I found Poltergeist III to be an extremely poor mess of a film. I don't want to speak ill too much, due to the tragedies surrounding the film, but I just didn't see anything redeeming in the content.

I thought the writing was quite poor. The structure was messy. And the characters extremely unlikable. Carol Anne comes off as a bit of a brat at times, which lessened my ability to care. Nancy Allen started off decently, but the writing gradually made her more and more unlikable as the film progressed. (Even becoming a flat-out jerk in several key moments.) Tom Skerrit was alright, but I felt he was a bit, well... creepy. And other characters just feel flat and felt like one-dimensional cliches. Outside of Heather O'Rourke, I also felt that the actors weren't really thrilled with the material. They didn't seem to be giving it their all.

A lot of concepts brought up were laughable. The whole idea of the doctor obsessed with the "mass hypnosis" theory was just ludicrous, and made it impossible to take him (or any scene that he's in) seriously. There is also no attempt made to construct an internal logic or set of rules within the context of the film, which is problematic, as the movie is obviously operating on its own agenda, and not playing by the established rules of either of the two films.

The attempts at creating mood and fear fall flat. The idea of the mirrors was a fascinating one. But this film makes a tragic mistake in assuming that repeating the same scare tactics over and over somehow makes something more frightening. And it backfires, because those tactics instead become humorous. Because the concepts and scares early on are repeated far too often. To the point of being beyond predictable. You know that it's coming. And the haphazzard execution of many of the scares couples with this to make it more amusing than scary. The same can be said for other scare tactics (Such as Kane incessantly being heard calling for Carol Anne), which are repeated to the point of amusement and then frustration. It's almost like that amusing little scene from Spies Like Us, where everyone is greeting eachother by saying "Doctor" over and over... the repetition creates a certain degree of humor. Except while it works in a comedic film, here it betrays the intended sense of dread.

Nothing else seems to work. The effects are shoddy. (The young man covered in "ice" that you can see is really just a light foam that doesn't resemble ice at all, for instance.) The execution of key scenes fall flat (or becomes insanely laughable), such as the "Kane driving cars that roar-like lions" action sequence. The film becomes lazy and relies on cheap tactics to manipulate false thrills, being the only entry in the series to contain what comes off as more-or-less a cheap slasher-film type murder with the elevator shaft sequence. Etc.

This is probably one of the most disappointing horror sequels of all time, if I'm to be honest.

And FURTHERMORE, this is my signature! SERIOUSLY! Did you think I was still talking about my point?

[deleted]

Yeah it's flawed but I like Poltergeist 3 too, It has a cheesy B-movie quality about it, a few scenes are genuinely creepy. Poltergeist 2 is decent but it tries too hard to evoke the first movie instead of being its own thing, there's some cool ideas but they aren't fleshed out quite enough, Kane was a great villain though.

I felt it was just a poor sendoff to the series. I really wish they went with the original ending, I felt that would give closure to both Tangina and Carol Anne. Instead we get a rushed ending that features the back of Heather's stand in's head. So the evil Carol Anne in the window earlier in the scene is the last we see of the character this whole series revolves around. All of this when thinking about how poor Heather died after completing the original ending just irks me even more.

And the biggest thing was the lack of humor. The humorous bits in the first really made the movie, helped us like the characters. Besides some cheesy effects, not much to laugh at in this one. And of course unlikeable characters.

It's cool if you enjoy it, hell I have some questionable taste in movies myself lol. But I do not see myself revisiting this one ever again.