Let’s get the tragedy out of the way: “Poltergeist III” suffers from the loss of not one, but two of its leading actors. The first, Julian Beck, succumbed to illness shortly before the release of “Poltergeist II,” and even though he obviously couldn’t return for “III,” the appearance of Kane is designed to resemble him enough that Beck is credited in the final film. The second, Heather O’Rourke, passed away due to illness while the movie was in post-production, shortly before director and co-writer Gary Sherman was about to shoot a newly developed ending for the film.
As such, “Poltergeist III” suffers from similar issues that plagued “Poltergeist II”; there’s confusion surrounding the series’ mythology, with this Reverend Kane (Nathan Davis, with voice by Corey Burton) having motivations contradictory to his character in the second film, and the supernatural activity is now based more in surreal, “A Nightmare on Elm Street”-esque rules (or lack thereof), which stand in stark contrast to Spielberg/Grais/Victor’s more rigid parapsychology from the original. The fact that Nelson and Williams declined to return, leaving Carol Anne, Kane, and the medium Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) as the only returning characters, means that “Poltergeist III,” as a sequel, feels almost as abandoned as Carol Anne herself.
However, just as Carol Anne learns to draw spiritual strength from her blended family of Aunt Pat (Nancy Allen), Uncle Bruce (Tom Skerritt), and cousin Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle), “Poltergeist III” finds its own footing by not being slavish to Hooper’s film, instead blazing its own tantalizingly eerie and thrillingly magic path. “Magic” is the key word there: in seeking to give his film an aesthetic separate from the visual effects gumbo that “The Other Side” became, Sherman has all the special effects for the movie be performed in-camera, utilizing various tricks of perspective, mirrors, lighting, and so on. As a result, “Poltergeist III” has an uncanny tangible quality, making its tale of a Chicago high-rise beset by Kane and his spectral helpers feel that much more disturbingly real. While Sherman and co-writer Brian Taggart leave the Freelings and much of Grais and Victor’s mythos behind, they do right by the franchise’s theme of family as well as its incisive social commentary, turning the high-rise into a microcosm of chilly (literally) late-’80s corporate culture. One of the last purely analog genre films ever made (and influential for that reason), “Poltergeist III” presents a compelling journey through the looking glass.