Horror movies have a relatively limited demographic, as far as releases go. They are usually aimed at people in their late teens and early twenties, with some nice runoff in the early thirties. It is a young-adult market, and as such has to appeal to young adults. Violence, jump scares, disturbing imagery and situations populate horror films, garnering the films an even more limited R-rating, creating this sort of black market for the younger demographic within the horror market. The teens within the market are split, with some over the age of 17 able to watch the films in theaters, while the rest have to wait for an uncle to fall asleep, or a friend to procure a copy in order to watch a DVD or VHS left silently unattended on the shelf. With the 00s, this changed quite a bit as films decided the black market of children watching gory horror films wasn't enough for them, and so softened up the contents of their films into PG-13 territory, but even so still kept things hedged against the R-rated fence as hard as they could.
Poltergeist is sort of strange when you think about it, being a horror film essentially aimed at the whole family. One scene of gore aside, Poltergeist falls into that category Steven Speilberg's harder family films generally reside. Jaws, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and his produced Gremlins (that latter two of which inspired the creation of the PG-13 rating) each are generally family films with a darker, more frightening edge. But they aren't horror films, not really. Temple of Doom is a straight up action film with some darker bits thrown in for color. Gremlins is a horror-comedy, not intentionally scary so much as the more fun "creepy", meant to provoke feelings of the macabre without forcing a pronounced reckoning with its more gnarly aspects. Jaws comes pretty darn close, a full-on suspense thriller, if you could call it that instead of a creature feature, but prefers to let the horror take a back seat as good thrillers generally do (Se7en may be the more evenly balanced child of "horror" and "thriller", for the sake of argument). Poltergeist wanted to be a horror film, first and foremost, but it also wanted to be a family film.
Poltergeist was co-written and produced by Spielberg, who was contractually prevented from directing the film while he worked on E.T. with Universal Pictures. The process of making Poltergeist is heatedly debated for a number of reasons. Despite Spielberg being credited as the story writer, Tobe Hooper, the eventual director of the film, said the story was his and that he had pitched it to Spielberg. Tobe Hooper at the time was most well known for his independent horror classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a gnarly and dark film that pushed the R-rating, notably with minimal violence. Poltergeist feels distinctly Spielberg in style and substance, with its focus on family and childhood wonder, a far cry from Tobe Hooper. Accounts differ as to how much Spielberg did for the film, with some saying he storyboarded most of the film (Tobe Hooper only lays claim to half the storyboards, a remarkably low number), and comments about how Spielberg was on set nearly the entire shoot. At the end of the day, Poltergeist feels like a Spielberg film. Make of that what you may.
But the Spielberg affect is precisely why this film works as a family horror film. The film follows a California family who recently moved into a house that is a part of a new housing development. The suburbs in California are popping up rapidly, and as such these developments have to act fast. The youngest child of the family, Carol Anne, starts to talk to voices she hears in the TV static. Odd occurrences are seen throughout the household, at first more of a marvel than anything directly scary. It isn't until Carol Anne is taken, only able to communicate through TV static, that they turn to paranormal investigators who inform them they may be dealing with a poltergeist. Virtually every haunted house film you've seen has been, to some degree or another, a remake of Poltergeist, most notably the Insidious films. Poltergeist's plot isn't horribly original, but it does condense a good ghost story into its most basic traits (and relocates the action from an old mansion to a more modern, albeit mid-to-high class home) and plays them effectively. Early scenes with the family feel real and warm, the way Spielberg does best. The mother is doting and tired, but never trivialized. The father is hard working and occasionally prone to manly outbursts of disbelief, but it is never dwelled on. One of the most appreciative aspects in Poltergeist is in how it doesn't waste our time with the family's disbelief. It is pretty early on in the ghostly occurrences that the family realizes what they are working with is something supernatural.
Also very like Spielberg, the film isn't without its comedy. The early scenes with the paranormal investigators trying to prove their sincerity on the subject by mentioning their past observations is immediately trivialized when they see how very active the ghostly events are in the house. The comedy more than likely undermines the horror atmosphere just a bit for the older people in the audience, but then again, the older audience isn't going to be particularly scared. How Poltergeist is able to maintain a family oriented horror movie is by giving different demographics stuff to be entertained by. The younger people in the audience will more than likely be scared by quite a bit of what is in the film, while the older kids will have few scares but plenty of neat special effects shots to be entertained by. Teenagers, I could see, might opt out of the film in favor of something pushing more boundaries or being far scarier, but adults will enjoy the family drama grounding the plot in a sincere what if scenario that puts the modern person into something fantastical. There are very few movies I can think of that try for such a broad audience while still being horror, and of that small group there are fewer that manage to nail it as well as Poltergeist does.
Poltergeist is a strange classic, one that you hesitate to put into the horror category because of how minimally scary it is, if it is at all (the only scene that gives me tension is the scene where the boy looks under the bed, and that is because of how it is shot more than the scare itself). It could be categorized as a family film, but it leans on the darker side of things, to the point where when I was a kid in the 90s some parents outright forbid their kids from watching it in that way the 90s was where kids were being overprotected. Poltergeist hits a lot of points with me, and even having seen it a few dozen times I still enjoy it. It is an excellent example of entertainment first, and of a type of movie I'd love to see attempted again.
8.0
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