Little Carol Anne Freeling has been sent to live with her aunt and uncle while attending a special school for emotionally troubled youngsters. Her new home is in a massive new state-of-the-art skyscraper which is being built by her uncle. Things are going fine until a teacher at her school digs a little too deep into Carol Anne's psyche and unleashes a ghost from the young girl's past in Poltergeist III.

The second sequel to the 1982 haunted-house classic Poltergeist continues and completes the story of Carol Anne and her spiritual and one of them will finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Only Carol Anne and "The magical munchkin" Tangina carry over from the original film in this one as Carol Anne is now placed in a new setting and left in the care of her relatives.

Horror vets Tom Skeritt and Nancy Allen fill in the roles of Carol Anne's aunt and uncle and a very young Laura Flynn Boyle plays her cousin. The biggest flaw in the casting however, is that the serpentine Julian Beck did not get to reprise his role as Reverend Kane, which is a shame because the man was truly creepy in the role. The bad reverend is played by Nathan Davis this time around, but much like Vincent Perez in The Crow: City of Angels, you kind of know that the film makers were looking for a replica of the original performance.

The chills and thrills are nearly all of the “jump” scare variety, but a couple are pulled off rather well, the best being an incident with a reemerging Laura Flynn Boyle. Most of the effects work in this film deals with mirrors, reflections or cold in one way or another, but everything looks pretty good, all and all.

This film also gives the reason to why Carol Anne is so sought after by the minions of the hereafter and why she is needed to bring them back to the other side, it’s simple and I thought it worked really well.

Poltergeist III is a pretty fair if not cliché movie, nothing really shocks you, but it’s a pretty good way to entertain yourself for a bit. What makes this one a little hard to take is the kind of happy go lucky ending that quickly gets dished out, it gives the franchise closure, but it just seems a bit too sappy.

4 of 10

On a sad side note to this film twelve year old Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Anne in all three films, died shortly before filming was completed. The film which was almost not released due to the tragedy was dedicated to her memory. Heather was the second star of the Poltergeist series to pass away early, Dominique Dunne who played Heather’s sister Dana in the first film was murdered by her estranged boyfriend the same year of the original film’s release.