Where do I begin with this one? Well I guess I should give a brief plot summary because it turned out to be a little different than what I had originally thought. The Freelings are a typical white middle class suburban family that encounter ghosts in the form of a poltergeist. Their youngest daughter gets taken by the ghosts and they try to get her back. It’s that last part that I had no idea about (but don’t worry I didn’t spoil the movie for you). The Freelings bring in a paranormal team and a psychic to help them because they don’t know what the hell is going on.
Ok, some other stuff to get out of the way. Craig T. Nelson (Action Jackson, The Devil’s Advocate) is Steve Freeling and he’s fine I guess. JoBeth Williams (Dutch, The Big Chill) is his wife Diane and she’s fine I guess. They have an older daughter Dana, a younger daughter Carol Anne and a son Robbie. They’re all fine I guess. I dunno man the whole cast including the paranormal team and the psychic are all pretty uninteresting. Nelson and Williams seem like they’re trying really hard to create an emotional performance but it comes off feeling pretty forced. The girl and boy who play the younger daughter and son are both really young so I can’t expect too much out of them. And the older daughter seems like she’s barely in the movie. You know what, she never does anything anyway so I don’t understand why she’s in the picture at all.
It’s shot fine and the pacing is alright. There’s one really weird whiplash inducing edit though. After Carol Anne slides across the kitchen floor Diane starts talking, but then it jump cuts to outside of their neighbor’s house. I thought maybe the DVD I had was scratched but after checking online other people have complained of the same problem. One explanation I found was that Steve is supposed to say “I hate Pizza Hut” but MGM had to cut it out because Pizza Hut objected to it. And that’s as good an explanation as any because I don’t really give a shit. It’s just a very noticeable thing in an otherwise well edited film.
Alright let’s get down to business. This film is a mess. And I think the main reason why it’s a mess is because no one knows who really directed it. The screenplay was written by Steven Spielberg and two other guys, Michael Grais and Mark Victor who both went on to write and produce Marked for Death. Fuckin’ A. But they also wrote Cool World which is one of the worst fucking films I’ve ever seen. Spielberg also produced the film and supervised everything. I decided to dig a little on this one and depending on the person you ask who worked on the film, they’ll either tell you that Hooper directed it, Spielberg directed it or they collaborated together but Spielberg had the final say. I read a whole bunch of different things like Spielberg himself saying that Hooper directed the thing but there’s also another account that says that Spielberg had to take over because Hooper was taking too many drugs. If you ask Hooper he says he directed it. But the post production people like the editor, the sound mixer and the score composer all say that they worked exclusively with Spielberg and that Hooper dropped by maybe two or three times. I’m not sure what to believe just based on reading everyone’s memory of the shoot. If you just look at the film it does feel very Spielbergian but with a twist. And by a twist I mean shitty. Not that everything that he’s done has been great but he’s usually more competent than this.
(There’s a bunch of spoilers in the rest of this piece)
For instance the chair stacking scene, the house getting sucked into itself, the clown attack, the children’s poltergeisted bedroom are all good ideas. They’re cool things that I want to see in a movie but I also want the non special effects stuff to work too. I mean I don’t understand why the parents are lighting up two j’s right before bed. I could’ve done without seeing fuckin’ coach acting all high ‘n shit and making goofy jokes. I don’t get why Diane gets so excited when she discovers that there’s a spot in the kitchen that makes things slide across the floor. At first she and Steve are so happy to the point that they’re giddy that there’s this weird fucking phenomena in their house. I don’t know about you but I would be concerned and at least a little scared about that sorta shit. I also don’t get why the paranormal team is there at all. I mean in the end they don’t do shit. Why did they make Diane so young when she had her first daughter? At one point Steve says that Diane is 32 and his older daughter is 16. That means that Diane would’ve been 16 when she had her. That also means that she got knocked up 9 months before. She could’ve been as young as 15 when Steve fucking impregnated her. This is all shit that just wasn’t thought through.
The dues ex machina type ending when they bring in the psychic pissed me off too. All through the movie no one has any fucking clue what’s happening but then all of a sudden you got this one person that not only knows about these ghosts but also knows exactly how to get Carol Anne back. I would accept this more if the rest of the film was better but to slap that on to round everything up feels like Spielberg gave up. It’s like he got this far in the script but then didn’t know how to resolve it.
After the psychic does her thing and leaves it felt like the movie should’ve ended there but I’m glad that it didn’t because the very end is the best part. I do have to admit that the coffins coming up out of the ground with corpses popping out of them looked cool. So I’ll give points for that. I want to say that they should’ve just went with this ending and bypassed the psychic part but then it would’ve felt like a jip to just have the ghosts resolve it themselves. And also you need a way to get Carol Anne back…or not actually. That might have been a cool ending to have their daughter still in the clutches of the netherworld and you’re left with the rest of the family still lost and not knowing what to do.
I wonder if Spielberg realized that he’s not very good at writing after this one because he didn’t do another screenplay for 19 years. But I still want to know why he would write a movie and not direct it, especially if he’s not a screenwriter? Close Encounters is his first baby and this would be his second. You wouldn’t give up the director’s chair on a project that you’re controlling every other aspect of. I’ve read that Spielberg did want to direct Poltergeist but couldn’t because he had already signed on to do E.T. and he wasn’t allowed to direct two films at once. That’s also just fucking nuts to try and do. My theory is that Spielberg worked around that problem by getting Hooper to fill in for him officially as director but still did as much work on the film as he could. Getting Tobe Hooper to direct this thing for real doesn’t make a lot of sense. He didn’t have shit to his name except The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Salem’s Lot which can’t be that impressive if you Steven fucking Spielberg. And he’d been replaced on two other films including the one immediately preceding Poltergeist. Why would Spielberg give his movie to this guy, he doesn’t seem like the best fit. Well I think Spielberg wanted someone that wouldn’t be too bothersome when he took control, someone to just go along with the program. Spielberg just needed the studio to know that there was some other guy there every day with the word “director” next to his name. Once shooting was completed then Spielberg really didn’t need Hooper. He could get away with whatever he wanted because now he just had to work with one or two other people at a time in a locked room somewhere. I think Hooper got played man. But at least he got some capital out of it that he cashed in right away to make Lifeforce. I mean watch Lifeforce or The Funhouse and tell me that it’s the same guy that directed Poltergeist. Some things might be similar but the overall look and feel is pretty different.
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