Classic Review: Poltergeist (1982)

Poltergeist has earned a reputation as one of Steven Spielberg’s B-sides. He didn’t direct it but he did have significant creative control over the project and it does feel like a horror inflected version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In fact, it was originally envisioned as a sequel to that film, with Spielberg attached to direct the project. However, Spielberg ended up working on the phenomenally successful E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and passed this project off onto Tobe Hooper, a veteran of the horror genre. Hooper decided to alter Spielberg’s script and decided to tell a ghost story, whilst still retaining a considerable amount of Spielbergian schmaltz. While there is no reason to doubt that Hooper did direct the film, it would be difficult not to notice that Spielbergian touches are all over the project. This does feel like a very accurate replication of one of Spielberg’s early 1980s blockbusters. Unfortunately, it has the faint whiff of inferiority because it isn’t nearly as polished as the films that inspired it. 

Poltergeist  takes place in a suburban setting and centers around the sickeningly happy Freeling family. Matriarch Diane (Williams) is a capable housewife and patriarch Steven (Nelson) is happy to devote most of his energy to his career as a real estate developer. They raise their three children together and seem to be very popular in their neighborhood. Their lives are thrown into disarray when ghosts begin haunting their house and eventually capture their daughter Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) and trap her in another dimension. Diane and Steven call on parapsychologists to help them investigate the haunting and hope to recapture their daughter and bring her back to their dimension. When they find out that Steven’s employers have something to do with the haunting, they realize that they can no longer remain complacent. 

One can’t help but feel as though the Freeling family is just a little too unrealistic. Mum and Dad don’t have the sort of minor spats that tend to be commonplace in suburban family households, the kids all blend together and nobody resents the fact that they’re trapped in a suburban household. Diane is practically a Stepford wife and Steven seems so vacant that one can’t help but wonder how he could ever convince anybody to purchase a house. If this were a satire, their vacuity would serve some purpose. The film could poke fun at the fact that they all seem incapable of expressing emotions or interacting with one another in the way that ordinary human beings would. Hooper and the actors never exploit this angle as it seems that viewers are merely meant to suffer through the first act. It’s only there to present us with characters who will eventually be victims of the scary ghosts. They’re just hunks of meat that could be attacked at any moment and we’re meant to lick our lips as we imagine an ordinary suburban housewife being thrown against a ceiling by a ghost. Perhaps the members of the Freeling family should have been terrible people. That would have meant that we could have cheered when they were attacked, without being bored by their vapidity. 

Poltergeist is ultimately a horror film and that means that all of the money went into the supposedly thrilling third act. It features a couple of set pieces and special effects that must have seemed innovative at the time, but it isn’t quite enough to make up for how difficult it was to care about anything happening on screen. Even when ghosts are picking up human beings and tossing them around like play toys, they are never particularly scary. This is probably because the ability to identify with the ghosts, rather than caring about the wellbeing of the humans. The characters are so thinly drawn and annoying that it’s easy to want to see them thrown into an incinerator. The ghosts mess up their boring daily routine and initially appear to be cruel sadists who are screwing with this family for their own viewing pleasure. One can almost take delight in the fact that they torture people for the hell of it. When it is revealed that they are legitimately dastardly and have a convoluted backstory, they become far less compelling. 

When viewers find themselves rooting for spectral forces to torture a little girl, something has gone seriously wrong. While the filmmakers were surely not out to produce a snoozefest, they ended up doing just that. Poltergeist is poorly written and constructed, contributing to the feeling that the vaunted special effects are not effectively implemented. One would feel genuine terror when a ghostly hand reaches out of a television to touch a blonde toddler if they knew anything of substance about the child. When she is used like a prop, it becomes far more difficult to justify screaming at the top of one’s lungs. 

still courtesy of MGM

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Zita Short

I am passionate about screwball comedies from the 1930s and certain actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’ll aim to review new Netflix releases and write features, so expect a lot of romantic comedies and cult favourites.