Poltergeist (1982)
HORROR-THON 2021 • THEY’RE HERE
9/10
DIRECTOR: Tobe Hooper
STARRING: JoBeth Williams, Heather O’Rourke, Craig T. Nelson
RELEASED: 1982
RUNTIME: 1 hour, 54 minutes
WATCH ON: AMC+, Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home
SCARE LEVEL: Medium, but it’ll get you if you watched it as a kid
CLOWN DOLL: Never again
The Freelings live in a brand-new planned community in California: matching houses, fresh lawns, and a pool going in out back. It’s the American dream in beige, and then their youngest daughter starts talking to the TV static.
Steve and Diane Freeling have three kids and a house in a development called Cuesta Verde. One night, five-year-old Carol Anne sits in front of the static on the TV and announces, “They’re here.”
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At first the haunting is almost fun. Chairs stack themselves on the kitchen table. Carol Anne slides across the floor. Diane is thrilled. Then the big tree outside grabs their son through the window. In the chaos, Carol Anne disappears into the closet. She can still be heard through the TV, but she’s nowhere in the house.
A team of parapsychologists moves in. Eventually they call in Tangina, a tiny medium with a huge presence, who explains what’s going on and how to get Carol Anne back. The rescue works, and then the family learns why the house was haunted in the first place. It’s about the worst thing a real estate developer could do.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
The movie that made every kid afraid of their own bedroom. A clown doll, a tree, the closet, food crawling across the counters - every scary thing is something already in your house. In fact, I saw this as a kid and couldn’t watch it again until now.
What gets me is how real the family feels. Steve and Diane are laughing at a book about Ronald Reagan, their kids fight, and their house is messy. When things go wrong, it seems to hurt more because they are just like any other family.
There seems to be a running debate over whether Tobe Hooper or Steven Spielberg really directed it. Spielberg wrote and produced it, and you can absolutely tell. His suburban-wonder fingerprints are all over it. I don’t think it matters who did it truly, because the whole thing works.
As a design person, I can’t ignore the house. The whole thing is a haunted house with a split-level floor plan and wall-to-wall carpeting. The ghosts must be angry because the developer cut corners. See enough new builds, and you’ll believe it too.
Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina is a legend. She gets the best line in the movie, and she definitely knows it.
FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY
The “Polgergeist Curse” is an urban legend based on four cast members’ deaths between 1982 and 1988. Only Dominique Dunne’s death was unnatural. The curse is often attributed to real human skeletons used in the pool scene, with debates over their authenticity. A special effects makeup artist confirmed their use, citing cost-effectiveness over creating realistic prop skeletons.