31 Days of Halloween Films #15: Poltergeist
The Lowdown: A realtor and his family begin to experience the presence of what seems like ghosts in their home, urging them to leave. When the daughter starts communicating with these spirits through the white noise of the family television, it sets off a chain of events involving murderous clown dolls, pools full of dead bodies and evil white demons coming out of the closet.
The Breakdown: Maybe the most accessible horror film ever made, Poltergeist benefits from the fact that it was created during the golden age of family films, the 80’s. With Spielberg as a producer, and rumored ghost-director of the film, you get a real sense of quality and continuity that wouldn’t necessarily be present in similar films in the genre. Tobe Hooper, director of the immortal Texas Chainsaw Massacre, gets the directing credit here, weaving the tail of a family’s suburban nightmare with sinister ease.
Poltergeist really is a master-class in being subtly creepy without overdoing the gore or violence. Simple scenes, such as the chairs being stacked on the table in the kitchen, the dog clearly motioning towards something unseen in the bedroom, or even the presence of a malevolent clown doll in one of the kids’ room carries a special sort of dread along with it that carries through all aspects of the story. By having the audience sympathize with the daughter Carol Anne, played by the late Heather O’Rourke, the focus of the story stays fixed upon the idea of a completely helpless parental nightmare.
The subplot about the real estate developer building on ancient Native American burial grounds is good and creepy. It’s reminiscent of aspects from The Shining, another film that dealt with familial breakdown but of a very different kind. Coupled with the effective practical creature effects in the film, which are pretty awesome on their own, are some of the most fundamentally messed up scenes I’ve seen done in horror films. The sequence where a guy thinks he’s ripping his own face off when washing it is really outstanding and effective. Also, any of the scenes featuring Zelda Rubenstein as the medium are oddly unsettling. Her character, with her high-pitched voice and kind demeanor, seems otherworldly and fits right in with the spooky goings on throughout the film.
The Comedown: Poltergeist, for many, is a staple of the horror genre. I included it in this list because I feel that, even as recent as this year, films are still trying to perfect the formula that Poltergeist nailed on its’ first try, the haunted kid/house family drama. James Wan successfully did it with Insidious and The Conjuring most recently, but it’s important to remember those films, while both very well done, aren’t as original as some might want to believe. For a great mix of entertainment and scares, you’d be hard pressed to find anything as strong in both areas as Poltergeist.