Poltergeist (2015)
Directed by Gil Kenan
No — Poltergeist is not woke, scoring 4 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
The 2015 Poltergeist arrives as a remake of a 1982 film that had already said everything it cared to say, and it says those things again with better lighting and less conviction.
Consciousness Markers
The cast is overwhelmingly white, with Susan Heyward as Sophie in a minor supporting role and no commentary on her presence. Standard ensemble, no deliberate diversity push.
A property developer who failed to relocate the cemetery bodies is a mild background villain, but this is inherited from the 1982 original and never developed into a critique of capitalism.
Amy Bowen is a proactive mother who drives the rescue, but this is conventional horror-mom behavior with no feminist framing or messaging.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext whatsoever.
No engagement with race, racism, or racial identity at any point.
No environmental or climate themes present.
No body positivity themes or messaging.
No neurodivergent characters or themes; Maddy's psychic ability is supernatural, not framed as neurodivergence.
No historical revisionism; the film is a straightforward supernatural horror remake.
The film makes no attempt to lecture the audience on social or political issues.
Why it received this score
The 2015 Poltergeist arrives as a remake of a 1982 film that had already said everything it cared to say, and it says those things again with better lighting and less conviction. Gil Kenan directs. Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt play the Bowens, a family who purchase a suburban home built atop a cemetery whose bodies the developer neglected to move. A daughter is taken. A rope is thrown into a closet. The machinery turns.
On the matter of social consciousness, the ledger is nearly blank, and we record this without judgment. Susan Heyward appears as Sophie, a supporting presence the film declines to remark upon. Amy Bowen drives the rescue of her daughter, which is ordinary horror-mother behavior and carries no argument. The negligent property developer lingers in the background as a mild villain, inherited wholesale from the original and never shaped into an indictment of anything larger. There is no engagement with race, no romance beyond the heterosexual, no environmental anxiety, no body politics, no neurodivergence, no reworking of the historical record. This is a haunted house picture, and nothing else.
The film lectures no one. It wants only to frighten, and it manages this intermittently, which by the standards of the modern remake is a kind of integrity. Critics found it ephemeral, half as haunting as its namesake, and we concur, with the weariness of a person who has now sat through the same closet twice in one lifetime. The picture is a copy of a copy. Its politics are equally faded.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A family's suburban home is invaded by angry spirits. When the terrifying apparitions escalate their attacks and take the youngest daughter, the family must come together to rescue her.
Questions about Poltergeist
Is Poltergeist woke?
No — Poltergeist is not woke, scoring 4 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Poltergeist have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Representation Casting at 10.
How does Poltergeist compare to other 2015 movies?
It ranks #226 of the 289 films from 2015 we've scored; their average is 15. The wokest is Chi-Raq (78).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.