Poltergeist: 10 Big Differences Between Original And Remake

In the original movie, the mother, Diane, is highly involved in figuring out what’s going on. Early in the film, she sees the poltergeist bending silverware and moving chairs around the room. She’s pretty much convinced there’s something wrong from the start, and in fact she tries to actively investigate it. 

In the remake, the kids are far more involved than the parents, and when the first set of major events happen, the parents aren’t even home.

The equivalent scene to the furniture moving sequence instead happens to the son, Griffin, and in this version, the mother doesn’t really experience anything paranormal until Maddy is taken. Instead, the parents pretty much think the kids are just imagining things until they see it for themselves later on. And while in the original version it’s Diane who goes into the spirit world to rescue Carol Anne, in this version it’s the son.

This change honestly doesn’t matter too much, and actually it arguably makes things a bit scarier in the remake especially for younger viewers. It’s so scary and frustrating to just want the parents to believe the kids but knowing that they’re going to be ignored until it’s too late. That is admittedly kind of a cliche of the genre, but it's not a bad change to give the remake a new perspective.