Poltergeist (1982)

User Review

• 

  Barneyonmovies

  5 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: Horror films can do two things. They can simply scare the living crap out of you, and they can use their horror concept to explore some real life themes. Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper's 'Poltergeist,' is definitely more so concerned with the latter of those two things, as it's certainly closer in tone to 'ET,' over Hooper's 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre.' In fact, its entire narrative is effectively written to follow a family living out the American dream in all of its commercialist glory, and then go completely ruin that as their house becomes haunted. There's a rather amusing little central idea about how the way their housing estate was built leading to the chaos that ensues, and that coupled with the way the leads play the family as initially shallow and consumer-obsessed, and then blindly terrified, does somewhat slap a smile on your face.
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: The thing is, it isn't remotely scary because there's no real building of tension. That wouldn't be a problem if the thematic or character stuff was working at the top of its game, but frankly - whilst the whole American dream thing is kind of interesting - there's not much there to really hold onto. The majority of the run-time is spent performing different attempts at some sort of exorcism to save the house, and when you don't particularly care for the deliberately shallow characters who populate it, it's hard to truly engage with any of that.
  
  VERDICT: A horror about a family living out the American dream in all of its commercialist glory which is then wrecked by a haunting, 'Poltergeist,' is somewhat appealing, but isn't overly engaging because it's not scary nor overly meaningful.

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