Poltergeist
Do you ever sit and wonder about your childhood? Looking around at the restrictions on kids now, you may scoff at the parents who allow them to watch such violent and horrifying movies. Obviously, there were moments when we snuck DVD’s that we had found lying around the house over to sleep overs and watched them so intently that we didn’t sleep for months. In fact, it is probably the reason we are all paranoid and scared. Hell, maybe parents now have the right idea.
This all being said, the movies covered this week seem to be all (mostly) ones that were watched during childhood. In fact, when I was thinking about this movie, my sister turned around and said, “oh yeah, that was our go to Halloween movie.”
Seriously.
So abandoning all hopes of ever sleeping, I am once again looking at Poltergeist.
Poltergeist is set in the warm and sunshine filled suburbs of California. A family, named the Freelings, movie into a newly developed housing. Unfortunately, there are a couple of flaws with their new home. One big one being that it is inhabited by ghosts with unfinished business. Not content with pushing things over, slamming doors, or turning lights on (as that’s all ghosts seem to do nowadays) the spirits decide that the best course of action is to kidnap their youngest daughter, Carol Anne and take her into their realm. Mother Diane is devastated and must not only unearth the spooky past of her household, but get her daughter back by any means.
Poltergeist is a fantastically produced and visually creepy movie. Using a combination of prosthetics and computer generated ghouls, Poltergeist uses creatures from our darkest imagination to give that effective horror. The ghosts here aren’t just bumps in the night, they are monsters who come and snatch a child to make amends for the injustice they suffered. Some excellent stand out scenes here that are petrifying; a maggoty steak and a man pealing his face off. There is so much here to keep you up at night.
Not only are the supernatural monsters, the images, so preposterous and terrifying, but the film plays on that notion of kidnapping and a child in danger. Actress JoBeth Williams is superb at captivating at all those feelings; the fear, the anguish and the determination to get her child-back even if it seems hopeless feels terribly real. In fact, if you take away the ghosts here, it would work insanely well as a drama.
Poltergeist has become infamous now. While it is a stellar movie that is still as scary now as it was back then, the whole production has been plagued by a curse. If you hadn’t heard, the team used actual skeletons during the pool scene, stating it was cheaper to buy them. Obviously, not listening to the moral of the story, this lead to the rumours of a curse. Especially since, within the six years of film being released, four of the cast members died.
All in all, Poltergeist touches on many morals that translate to today; “please don’t mess with my body after I’ve died. It’s rude,” and “don’t sit too close to the television, you may get sucked in.” That being said, it is still as fearful now as it was back then. Even more so knowing that fiction may have truly become fact.
TTFN
Cookie.