The Poltergeist remake trailer reinvents the franchise for a post-Speak & Spell world

The first trailer for the Poltergeist remake has arrived, and as expected it appears to be building an entirely new revenue stream on top of the dusty bones of the original series’ corpse. Some things have changed—the family’s name has been changed from the Freelings to the Bowens, for example, and Speak & Spells went the way of whoever’s buried under the house in 1992, necessitating the insertion of a light-up keyboard toy instead. An iPhone also lends the film a contemporary touch, and the famous TV is now a flat screen. (There’s still plenty of room for ghostly disembodied hands in there, of course.) Perhaps most significantly, British actor Jared Harris is doing the ghost busting this time around, as Zelda Rubinstein died in 2010. But other things remain the same—the new Poltergeist will be rated PG-13, as the original probably would have been if there was a PG-13 in 1982, and that clown is still super spooky. Whether the reboot is also cursed remains to be seen.