POLTERGEIST
They’re heeere again…
1982 ★★★★★ OUT 21 OCTOBER CINEMAS
Once you stop worrying about who directed what, 1982’s other Spielberg production after E.T. becomes free to stand on its own merits. Sure, Spielberg’s imprint is all over Poltergeist’s light and magic, however malign; perhaps you can also see Tobe Hooper’s imprint in its jumping jolts, crawling camera and sly wit.
But it’s as a slickly effective mainstream gateway-drug horror that the film works best, with Spielberg’s suburbia and the gogglebox doubling as well-chosen stages for subtextual explorations of contested territories. That theme is planted early in a TV-based fallout (Mister Rogers vs the ball game), before the fun kicks in when Freeling family moppet Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) disappears into the possessed telly. The carefully paced build-up of scares majors in dynamic tension, from kitchenrearrangement larks to stormy-night mayhem, while Zelda Rubinstein’s whispery cameo counterbalances the noisier excesses nicely.
Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams hit panic mode persuasively as the parents, suggesting subtexts about countercultural stoners clashing with the ’80s and adulthood. Elsewhere, a (Chain Saw-ish?) theme of encroaching on other people’s terrain surfaces intriguingly during the otherwise blustery climax. Gorehounds might prefer stronger scares, but the film succeeds as a shivery exercise in crossover stealth-horror, complemented beautifully by the music-box tinkles and thundery rumbles in Jerry Goldsmith’s fine score.
THE VERDICT
Spielberg/Hooper’s hit evil-TV chiller still works as a frights-for-all-the-family fairground ride.