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| Poltergeist |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 114 |
| Public Rating: 8.24 (21 votes) |
Director: Tobe Hooper/Steven Spielberg (uncredited) |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Horror/Mystery/Thriller |
Year: 1982 |
| Writer(s): Steven Spielberg, Michael Grais, Mark Victor |
| Distributor: Warner Brothers |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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A supernatural horror/haunted house film that substitutes antiseptic, uniform tract housing for the isolated, semi-deserted, gothic-styled house of traditional ghost stories, Poltergeist is probably the first Hollywood genre film to raise and use anxieties about modern technology (in this case, a static-filled television set). The preternatural, ghost-haunted child at the center of the plot also suggests that the recent vogue for creepy children prevalent in supernatural horror films and their American remakes may be due to cultural cross-fertilization (i.e., from the U.S. to Asia and back again) . With Steven Spielberg as executive producer, co-screenwriter (he also receives story credit), and uncredited director, Poltergeist exhibits little of the subversive approach to gore or violence present in Tobe Hooper’s earlier, more disturbing, horror films (e.g., The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Funhouse). Apparently, Spielberg also oversaw the editing and visual effects work (even while he worked simultaneously on E.T.: The Extraterrestrial).
On a narrative level, Poltergeistis unmistakably a Spielberg film, from the comfortably middle-class, idyllic suburban hamlet of Cuesta Verde, nestled in the Southern California foothills, to the All-American nuclear family, headed by Steve Freeling (Craig T. Nelson), a successful real estate agent, his wife, Diane (JoBeth Williams), and his three children, Dana (Dominique Dunne), the requisite teenager, Robbie (Oliver Robins), a prepubescent boy with a Star Wars obsession, and Carol Ann (Heather O’Rourke), a blond-haired moppet who becomes the target of the supernatural forces invading the Freeling home. There’s little hint of strain in the Freeling household, with one telling exception: the always-on television sets limits the number and quality of interactions between Steve and his family (Spielberg and his co-screenwriters also hint that the Steve and Diane are former counterculture types turned respectable suburbanites).
Carol Ann, it seems, is blessed (or cursed) with the ability to talk to the dead through the television set, but only after the local television station has signed off (the film begins with the “Stars and Stripes” playing in the background). Carol Ann can hear voices from the static-filled television set (if you’re wondering where White Noise borrowed its ideas, here’s a good place to start). After her parents hear Carol Ann utter the “They’re here,” line as she sits in front of their television set, a series of odd events alert first Diane and then Steve of the growing threat. Chairs and objects slide by themselves across the kitchen floor. The chairs rearrange magically rearrange themselves. Nightly storms batter the Freeling house. An enormous tree outside the children’s bedroom crashes through the windows, kidnapping one of the children. But the ghosts have other plans, specifically with Carol Ann. In probably most memorable set piece in Poltergeist, Hooper and Spielberg rely on a raised set of the children’s bedroom connected to a gimbal (a gimbal allows a room to turn on its axis while the camera and actors remain stationary) to realize the dark powers of the supernatural presence inside the Freeling home. All the objects in the room are inexorably pulled into of the brightly-lit closet. The emphasis here is on mechanical, not visual (i.e. models, mattes, and optical printing) effects, giving the scene an immediacy missing from the other, more effects-heavy scenes.
Carol Ann’s disappearance leads Steve to a group of ineffectual ghost hunters, led by Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight). They bring audio and video equipment to record the odd disturbances inside the Freeling home (as well as help in finding the now-missing child, but they soon give way to a height-challenged, wisdom-spouting medium, Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinsten), whose previous experiences with the supernatural allow her to share key expository information with the Freelings and the audience. Tangina alerts the audience as to the nature of the ghosts, why Carol Ann was taken and continues to be held, and what needs to be done to save Carol Ann from the ghosts lingering on an astral plane between heaven and earth. There’s more than a hint of an insidious, primeval force at work in the Freeling home, but it adds little to the narrative (except for one semi-effective scare scene that’s likely to elicit laughs from contemporary audiences).
Spielberg, however, wasn't content with letting the Freelings (and the audience) off so easily, with the family triumphantly reunited. Instead, Spielberg adds another rationale for the events inside the Freeling home, this time purely human (hint: avarice). This additional rationale or complication, only hinted at in an earlier scene, leads to a second, apocalyptic encounter with supernatural forces, as Cuesta Verde literally implodes, with a half-finished swimming pool revealing Cuesta Verde's last, ghoulish secret. This last virtuoso set piece, is almost the equal of the earlier closet and the rescue set pieces, but is also far less intimate and rushed, emphasizing shudder-inducing effects over human emotion. The brief denouement ends with a suitably clever punctuation mark, as the source of the troubles for the Freeling family is evicted from their temporary home. It also suggests (correctly, as the sequels indicate) that the Freeling family isn’t completely free from the supernatural menace they’ve left behind.
Obviously written and filmed with family audiences in mind (and with a larger production budget than most horror films at that time), Poltergeist depends primarily on visual effects rather than traditional makeup effects to generate scares and sustain suspense. Sadly, the visual effects in Poltergeist have dated poorly, with only one or two scenes relying on extensive visual effects still capable of eliciting more than a tired yawn or laughs from contemporary audiences. In the plus column, however, Poltergeist demonstrates Steven Spielberg’s intuitive understanding of dramatic conflict, tension, and pacing. Within Spielberg's oeuvre, Poltergeist is a welcome counterpoint (and antidote) to another Spielberg fable for children released the same year, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, an exercise in sentimentality and emotional manipulation.
© Mel Valentin, 5th February, 2005
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