Friday, October 24, 2014

Poltergeist

(1982) ***3/4

Suburban family starts to experience weird and inexplicable occurrences around their home.  The incidents start benignly enough, but quickly become threatening to the safety of the family members.

Loved revisiting this classic, which scared me plenty as a kid.  Found it entertaining enough this time though the second hour drags a bit with the supernatural jibber-jabber and unnecessary explanations.  The depiction of early 80s suburbia, lightened by humorous touches, was spot on and nostalgic. No, it's not that scary, and there are no deaths, but it's still a pretty satisfying watch.

5 comments:

JPX said...

I haven't seen this movie in more than a decade - glad to hear that it (mostly) holds up. I recall the sequels being awful, especially the third one.

Catfreeek said...

Every time I see this film I laugh and its all because of Octo's hilarious review where he pointed out the sons enormous teeth

Trevor said...

The clown image - modern horror movies use the clown as a symbol of terror, but hey work really hard at it - this clown looks like a real child's toy, but is still extremely scary.

Octopunk said...

Yay Poltergeist! I've been thinking about this flick because I watched Insidious. I feel like the reasons it works are still pretty mysterious, but it works.

DKC said...

For some reason I often think in my head about the scene in the end when the daughter Dana gets out of the car and screams, "What's happening?!"
Like, when something weird is going on I'll say that quote in my head.

Malevolent

 2018  ***1/2 It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. ...