Poltergeist is a movie I did not grow up watching. So I feel fairly confident that I'm talking about it in an unbiased fashion.


Plot: An ordinary family is going through the motions of their ordinary lives, when weird things start happening in their house. Furniture moves around on its own. Their youngest daughter starts talking to the TV in a very peculiar fashion -- when the TV is just switched to static. And then a tree tries to eat their son and things just spiral out of control from there.

I basically like the movie Poltergeist. In fact, I would go as far as to say I quite enjoy watching the movie Poltergeist. But there are some parts of it that just confuse me (and not in a good, "What an interesting mystery!" kind of way, but in a "...I can't tell why they did this, it seems like a filmmaker misstep," kind of way).

Pot-Heads
Okay. This is a little thing, but it's a problem for me. They do a lot of things to depict the family in this movie as just your average, run-of-the-mill, wholesome, ordinary family. We see them going through their daily routines. The kids are not incredibly well-behaved, but not so poorly behaved as to make us not like them. A pet bird dies and Mom has to go through the kid/pet funeral experience. The kids go off to school. Dad is shown doing his job (selling houses in the connected housing tract). THEN, later in the evening, we get to see Mom and Dad hanging out on their own, while talking over their day and relaxing... and smoking pot.


I am so confused as to why that particular element was included in this movie. It's not referenced again. It's not a story element; it's not like Mom and Dad's reliability is ever questioned later on (you know, in a "They're potheads, so maybe they didn't actually see a ghost!" way). So why was it included? Why not just have Mom and Dad have the exact same scene together while not smoking pot? Is it the filmmakers displaying their own warped notions of homelife by implying that "That's just something ordinary folk do! They smoke pot while they're relaxing at the end of the day!" ... Or is this a very clumsy way of the filmmakers going, "See, they used to be hippies, hence the pot, but now they're squares -- hence, the Ronald Reagan book." And Mom does have a moment, later on, when she says to Dad after she first notices the weird happenings in the house, "Think back to when you were open-minded," or something to that effect.

But his being open or closed-minded, or hers, never really enters the picture. There are never any doubts about whether or not there are ghosts, or whether they're just imagining it. A few minutes later, a tree attempts to eat their child, and whether or not they are open-minded to the paranormal is completely a moot point, because they are having to save their child from a supernaturally-possessed tree.

I'm not saying this figuratively. The tree is literally trying
to eat the kid.So why the pot? What was the point? The only purpose it serves, in the end, is to make Mom and Dad seem a little less wholesome and a little less responsible. And if this were a movie about unwholesome, irresponsible people becoming responsible, that would be fine -- but it wasn't! It was a totally useless moment!

Special Effects
For the most part, the special effects in this movie are quite good and pretty effective. You don't see all the ghosts, because it's just plain scarier that way -- but most of the ones you do see are portrayed in such a way that they are frightening.

However, there are three bad special effects moments in this movie:

This cartoon skeleton hand.
Stuff flying around in the bedroom.
A guy suddenly has a rubber monster face.
... Those are the three kind of bad-looking moments. The hand coming out of the TV looks like a cartoon; the stuff flying around in the bedroom looks like crappy, early computer effects; and the guy with the "suddenly rubber monster face" looks like a rubber monster face (although, regardless of its realism or lack thereof, I won't say that it isn't a nice surprise when it happens in the movie). In fact, whether or not these moments are effective despite their somewhat sketchy looking qualities is a whole other question -- I think, of the three, only the "stuff flying around the room" fails to achieve the desired result due to the quality of the effects.

That said, there are a lot of really good, impressive special effects. It's just that these three particular things kind of stand out.

Double-Endings (***Spoilers!***)

There are two endings in this movie.

1. The daughter, Carol-Ann, is sucked into the netherworld by the monsters. A psychic little person comes in and instructs them in how to get her back. They do so. BIG EMOTIONAL ENDING, EVERYBODY IS HAPPY, YAY. (That's the first ending. It feels like a full and complete ending in itself.) The psychic little person says, "This house is clean." THE END.

Maybe she just meant the house was surprisingly tidy.2. ...After that ending, the next day, they are moving out of the house and moving on with their lives. Dad goes to work to quit his job, and is gone for a really long time. Mom stops packing and decides to take a bath, dye her hair, and put the kids to bed (even though they previously agreed they were going to spend the night in a motel rather than spend one more night in this house). NOT SURPRISINGLY, since movies seldom tack on a fifteen-minute addendum to a film in which nothing at all happens, THE MONSTERS COME RIGHT BACK AND ATTACK THE FAMILY AGAIN. It's weird to me, then, that they had the little person (who was portrayed as an authority) shown as only half knowing what she's talking about. Yes, it's a good "surprise" ending and effective and scary -- but casts aspersions on a character in such a weird way that I'm not sure what they were going for. (THE END II). (***End of Spoilers***)


Ultimately...
I think this is an enjoyable movie to watch, mainly on the strength of the adult leads and the two smaller children. (The teen is basically a non-entity, included only for laughs). It is a story about the love of parents for their children, and it's touching and effective. The story is a little oddly structured, and there are some moments that seem to be making rather unclear points about the characters (the pot and the "this house is clean")... But it's still an enjoyable movie to watch.

In the end, therefore, it's...

RECOMMENDED(With Very Minor Reservations)