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Scholarly Source: biography.com

As this review explains, this 1982 movie, Poltergeist was an instant success and is considered to be a masterpiece of American horror cinema. A weird thing about the movie is that four cast members died during and soon after the filming. The other creepy myth about the movie is that director Spielberg used human skeletons as props to save money since they were cheaper than plastic skeletons, and this makes the movie appear cursed.

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Poltergeist Review by Roger Ebert

A good review from 1982 on Poltergeist is from Roger Ebert on June 1, 1982, and is discussing the special effects and how they have become so skilled and how great of a job Steven Spielberg did with the movie even though the actors are not very well known. Poltergeist also has a great director, Tobe Hooper, the same director as for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He talks about the spirits take total possession of the house and completely terrorize the family. He compares the movie to the movies, Altered States and Alien. He discusses how the closet seems to exist in another dimension. He says, "The swimming pool is filled with grasping, despairing forms of the undead." This review discusses how even though nobody decides whether a poltergeist is involved with the house or who the poltergeist may be, they decide to name the movie Poltergeist.

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Poltergeist is a 1982 American Supernatural horror movie written by Steven Spielberg and is about an average American family with three kids ranging in age from 16 down to 5. The family's home starts showing signs of possession by ghosts. It starts with static on the TV, and Carol Anne, the five year old is attracted to the static and hears voices coming from it. She calls them the TV people. At first the ghosts appear friendly, moving furniture around the house and there is no aggression shown by them. However, things soon change and the paranormal activity becomes more intense.

During this movie, there is mostly stormy, rainy weather and the spooky things happen during the night most often. One of these events was when the scary-looking tree that has been there for years, back when the land was a cemetery, breaks into the kids bedroom and grabs onto Robbie, trying to steal him and swallow him. The father saves him from this and outside it appears to be a tornado however no other houses are affected by the weather. Then Carol Anne disappears by getting sucked into the bedroom closet by an unusual force. This force has a lot of strong wind and bright white light sucking all of the room's contents into the closet.

There is also a creepy looking clown in the bedroom that Carol Anne and Robbie share, and Robbie covers it often with a jacket so he is not having to look at it.

The music is very suspenseful and eerie, and the lighting is very flashy and we often see signs of the paranormal activity such as when the lights representing ghosts came down the stairs. When a scary event is about to happen, things quiet down in the movie.

Some other strange occurrences that happen during the movie are when Robbie's fork and spoon become bent suddenly and a coffeepot on the table moves straight across it on its own. The kitchen chairs pile up on top of one another on their own.

The family calls in the Para psychology experts who stay at the house to help them investigate whether it is a poltergeist intrusion or a traditional haunting and to try to get Carol Anne back. It is very scary and sad to hear Carol Anne continue to say out of the TV, "Mommy, I can't see you, I am afraid of the light." At one point, the mother felt Carol Anne's spirit move through her body, and that encouraged her that they would get her back.

One particular scene that stood out to me was when one of the men from the paranormal organization went to get some food from the kitchen and the steak he took out of the fridge moved on its own down the counter and then creepy looking maggots came out of the steak. Then, worms started crawling all over the chicken wing that he spit out of his mouth, in terror as he was shocked at the steak. Then, he began hallucinating that he was ripping his own face off and the special effects were incredible, making him look monster-like.

They finally have a spiritual medium, named Tangina help them battle The Beast to get Carol Anne back. Tangina tells the family that Carol Anne is trapped in another dimension in the house. The investigative team uses special equipment to detect ghosts and they rely on Tangina's expertise to guide them in what to do to get Carol Anne back. Eventually, the mother, Diane, must go to the other dimension and guides Carol Anne towards the light and away from the bad forces. Tangina then considers the house to be "clean", the word she uses for a house freed of demonic spirits. One aspect of the movie that added to the horror was the use of screen space involving various shots. A good example was when Tangina said to the mom, "Let's go get your daughter, and as she said this, the camera had Tangina's face take up the whole screen and she had a very serious face. The other time screen space took up the whole screen was the close ups of the static on the TV. This showed the spookiness of the static and the significance of it. As the family decides to move, more terrifying things start up again in the house, including Robbie almost being strangled to death by the clown and then many dead bodies seem to self-exhume and they appeared like zombies, attacking the family. They luckily were able to all get in the station wagon, and drive away from the house before the zombies attacked their car, and then it shows the house becoming completely demolished. The father, Steve, portrayed by actor Craig Nelson, was not informed that his house had been built on the site of a graveyard which had only the headstones, not the bodies moved.