IN 1982, Steven Spielberg wrote and Tobe Hooper directed “Poltergeist”, about a family coping with the ghosts infesting their newly-bought house in suburban America. It spawned a short list of knock-offs and sequels.

Now Sam Raimi, director of several scare movies and three Spiderman films, has joined Gil Kenan to rehash Spielberg’s parvum opus. In a noisy, colourful, farrago of contrivances, the Bowen family (Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt and children Kendra, Griffin and six-year-old Madison) deals with the small and not particularly well-formed coterie of ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night.

The core of the plot is the disappearance of Madison (moppet Kennedi Clements, whose performance outshines all the others in the film), the family’s bumbling fumblings to find her and their ultimate hiring of ghostbusters (Jared Harris and Jane Adams) to do what the Bowens cannot. The process involves a lot of hi-tech gobbledygook before Madison reappears, the house is wrecked and the family drives away to an unknown and probably uncertain future.

It’s boring, tedious and unblessed by any credible raison d’être.

At Hoyts and Limelight