“They’re here.”
The simple tagline of the 1982 horror movie “Poltergeist” sums up the film perfectly: pretty creepy, with a little cheesiness thrown into the mix.
Right from the start, the viewer doesn’t know whether to be scared or laugh at the 1982 Steven Spielberg flick, but the movie jumps right into the action.
A normal family, the Freelings, start to notice their daughter acting strangely as unexplainable things happening in the house.
Daughter Carol Anne’s infatuation with the “TV people” and chairs mysteriously moving about the kitchen keep the watcher interested.
The movie is well cast, with Heather O’Rourke as the cute, creepy daughter. The witty and realistic parents, played by Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams, who keep the acting from making the film seem overly dramatic.
Admittedly, the effects are pretty good for an ’80s movie. For instance, it’s strange how they can actually make it look like the mother is floating up the ceiling with no strings attached.
But the effects go overboard toward the end of the movie, when the parents have to go through the portal — it’s unclear whether it leads to hell, or wherever — to save Carol Anne.
The same can be said when mother, Diane Freeling, falls into the unfinished pool and a bunch of skeletons start attacking her.
But the ridiculous effects add to the enjoyment of the movie more so than the dialogue-based scenes, which can drag on.
The grossest part just might be when one of the ghost hunters that come to the house starts pulling his face off in the kitchen because he becomes possessed. The scene was as grotesque and definitely not for the squeamish.
The parents smoking weed in bed right as their son comes in to complain about the storm outside is amusing and revealing of the movie’s generation.
Other unintentionally funny scenes are toward the end, when the whole house is about to implode from ghost attacks. The father, Steve Freeling, screams at the subdivision developer he works for. The whole “You only moved the headstones. Why? Why?” is just too corny to take seriously.
As far as classic horror movies go, this is one of the better ones. It’s not as creepy as “The Exorcist” or as chilling as “The Shining,” but it remains a classic.