Poltergeist, directed by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hooper in 1982, established that horror does not have to rely on gore to shock audiences. With a PG classification at the time, the film terrified moviegoers and spawned a franchise centered on the Freeling family. Apart from the horror components, the movie’s success was due to the believable middle-class family at the core of the plot.
They were simply a regular family, with a real estate agent for a father and pals who came over on weekends to watch the game. However, their lives are turned upside down when their daughter vanishes into another reality. The real-life deaths of four of the cast members had fuelled allegations of a curse on the franchise.
The Poltergeist franchise consists of three films released between 1982 and 1988, as well as a 2015 revival. While the first film focused primarily on the hauntings, the sequels introduced us to Reverend Henry Kane, a mad cult leader who refuses to leave the other side. Today, we will look at the franchise’s films as well as what the future may hold for it.
Poltergeist (1982)
The Freelings were an ordinary American family living in the suburbs. Steve Freeling was one of the best Real Estate Agents working for Teague. He was living in Cuesta Verde, in a house that looked identical to all the houses he used to sell. He lived with his wife and three kids, and his youngest daughter had a habit of sleepwalking. One night while sleepwalking, she started conversing with the static in the TV as if talking to an imaginary friend.
The next morning, Diane notices that Tweety, Carol Anne’s pet bird, has died. She was just about to flush the bird down when Carol Anne walks in and insists on giving the bird a proper burial. Carol Anne awakens later that night and walks to the TV. An apparition emerges from the static on the TV and vanishes into the wall. It causes a violent earthquake that only affects Freeling’s house.
Looking at the spectral manifestation, Carol Anne announces ‘They are here,’ in an ominous manner. The next morning, strange incidents begin to occur at the house. The utensils begin to bend and break for no reason and the furniture moves on its own. After noticing the chairs in the kitchen getting arranged by themselves, Diane asks her daughter whom she was referring to when she said ‘They are here.
Carol Anne responds by saying ‘the TV people. Rather than getting scared, Diane feels amused by the paranormal presence. She has fun playing with the ghosts in her kitchen and gets excited to show the strange phenomenon to her husband.
On seeing the unseen force pulling everything across the kitchen floor, Steve declares the area off-limits for everyone until he figures out what’s going on. During the night, Robbie gets scared of the thunderstorm and in particular, the tree outside the window. He thinks that the tree is watching him and feels uncomfortable with the thought of the tree knowing where he stays. The tree suddenly comes to life and grabs Robbie.
While the family is busy rescuing Robbie from getting sucked into the tree, a tornado appears in the children’s room and pulls Carol Anne into another dimension.
They frantically search for their youngest daughter in every corner, including the pit of the swimming pool but she is nowhere to be found. Robbie hears his sister’s voice calling for their mother but the sound was coming from the TV on a channel with no network. Desperate to find their daughter, Steve meets with a group of parapsychologists. Intrigued by the nature of paranormal activities occurring in the house, they decide to investigate the matter. The constant tornado in the children’s room and Carol Anne’s replies from the TV channel with no reception was beyond what they were expecting to find.
They concluded that the house was not haunted, as souls rarely interfere with the living. Whatever was happening in the house could be the result of a Poltergeist infestation. The group captures several oddities including a number of spirits walking through old belongings of people falling through the ceiling.
While searching the kitchen for food, Marty hallucinates worms coming out from a piece of meat. As he rushes to wash his face, the mirror shows his skin melting away. He snaps out of the visions but remains terrified. The parapsychologists leave to find more help while Ryan stays behind.
The Freelings send Robbie and their dog to stay with his grandmother and Dana leaves to stay with her friends. Worrying about Steve leaving the company, his boss arrives to check on him. As he shows Steve the plot for the development of the new phase, Steve finds out that their house was built over a cemetery. The company had moved the cemeteries before constructing the new houses.
The parapsychologists return with Tangina Barrons, a spiritual medium. She senses that Carol Anne is alive and present in the house. The spirits who were yet to enter the spectral light were haunting the house, feeling lonely and angry overseeing their loved ones grow up. Carol Anne emitted her own light and her life force made the spirits believe that she is their salvation.
Tangina also warns them about the malevolent presence who has been deceiving Carol Anne and keeping her close. On finding the entrance to the other dimension of the house, Diane is sent there to get Carol Anne before she walks into the light. They believe getting her back was the end of their nightmare but the worst was yet to come. The parapsychologists left, declaring the house free but the beast was still hanging around.
Instead of the usual setting where the haunting begins after a family moves into a new house, Poltergeist revolves around a suburban middle-class family residing at the house for a long time. Carol Anne was born in that house and that made her connection with the spirits deeper. She could communicate with them through a TV channel with no network.
The moment she declares ‘They are here’ is enough to send chills down your spine. Written by Steven Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper, Poltergeist remains one of the most effective horror movies forty years since its release. The quality of visual effects and computer graphics have evolved since the eighties.
However, the simple effects of spectral manifestations coming from the TV or guarding the door to the children’s room, while Diane tries to save them are quite effective. The scene where Marty’s face was melting is too grotesque to watch.
From a tree that’s trying to consume you to a swimming pool full of skulls, the movie gives you several reasons to be scared. The first installment in the franchise is the best out of them all.
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)
A year has passed since Freeling’s house has disappeared into another dimension. The neighborhood of Cuesta Verde was being evacuated and turned into an archaeological paranormal dig.
It centered on the location of Freeling’s stay. The ground crew discovers an underground cave during the excavation. After learning of this development, Tangina shares the information with her friend Taylor, an American Indian Shaman.
While investigating the cave, Taylor comes to know about Kane, an insane deceased preacher who had gone after Carol Anne. The Freeling family had moved to Phoenix, Arizona to live with Jess, Diane’s mother. Steve was now selling Vacuum cleaners door-to-door and repeatedly filed claims to cover their missing home.
Jess was a clairvoyant and her gift had been passed onto Diane and Carol Anne as well. Later, Jess dies of natural causes but promises her daughter that she’ll be there whenever she needs her.
Taylor shows up at the Freeling house because Kane had launched his first attack. The family had removed all television sets from the home to prevent the previous incidents. Unable to rely on his old tricks, Kane and his minions think of another way to get in. They try to enter through Carol Anne’s toy phone but they don’t succeed. The family leaves the house as soon as possible but Taylor informs them that it won’t be effective. Kane would find them wherever they go.
Taylor makes the house safe for the time being, as the family returns to the house. One day, Kane shows up at their doorstep in his human form and demands to be let in. (Let me in the scene). Steve refuses to budge. Kane seemed to have had a previous encounter with Taylor.
He laughed after Steve acknowledged Taylor by name and said “So that’s what he calls himself now.” Taylor appreciates Steve’s efforts in standing up to Kane. He takes him out to the desert where he gives him the Power of Smoke, an Indian spirit with the ability to repel Kane. Tangina returns to help the Freeling and helps Diane understand the history of the Beast.
Reverend Henry Kane was a cult leader who believed that the end of the world was near. He led his followers into a cave, to shelter them from the apocalypse but never let them out even after the predicted date passed.
They eventually starved to death. Because of his evil nature, he became a monster after his death and absorbed the spirits of his followers to increase his strength. Taylor warns the family of Kane’s intention of tearing them apart and to not underestimate his shrewdness. The morale of the family drops after Taylor leaves.
One night, Steve gets drunk and lets his guard down. He ends up consuming a Mezcal worm possessed by Kane and it lets Kane temporarily possess him. Kane inhabiting Steve’s body tries to force himself on Diane but he gets weakened when she shouts that she loves her husband.
Steve vomits the worm out and it takes on the shape of a huge, tentacled monstrosity. Kane uses this form to attack Steve from the ceiling but the use of the smoke spirit sends him away. When the beast attempts another attack on the family, it leaves them no choice but to confront the beast in his own territory, on the other side. The Freeling family returns to Cuesta Verde and enters the cave below their former house. Kane immediately pulls Diane and Carol Anne into the other side, while Steve and Robbie jump in through the fire started by Taylor.
Steve and Robbie unite with Diane and Carol Anne on the other side. Kane grabbed Carol Anne in the form of a horrific monster. Taylor had handed an Indian lance charm to Steve, that he used to stab and defeat the beast. The action caused Kane to fall into the afterlife.
As he crosses over to hell, he has to encounter all the spirits he had trapped over the years. Carol Anne almost passed into the afterlife with him, but Grandma Jess’s spirit appears to protect her. She stops her from going into the light and reunites her with the family. The Freelings safely return from the other side and thank Taylor and Tangina for their help with defeating the spirits.
The elder sister, Dana, didn’t appear in the sequel as the actress who portrayed her had been murdered by her boyfriend. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only cast member to have passed away before her time. There were rumors of a curse surrounding the franchise, as several of the cadavers used on the set were real skeletons. The set had to be exorcised to ease tensions with the cast and crew.
The actor who portrayed Reverend Kane passed away of stomach cancer, before the release of the film. The curse surrounding the franchise adds to the eerie atmosphere while watching the film. The sequel wasn’t as gripping as the original movie but it fared well. It gave a backstory and form to the beast who had taken Carol Anne to the other side in the first movie.
Tangina had described him as an evil presence who appears as a child to Carol Anne and lies to her. In the sequel, we get to see him in his human form and the extent of his cunning and power.
When Carol Anne declares ‘They are back,’ it sounds just as ominous as when she had declared their arrival. The fans of the original clearly felt the absence of Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg in The Other side, but the film does hold up well because of the performance by Julian Beck as the insane Priest.
Poltergeist III (1988)
Exhausted from constantly fighting Reverend Kane and his followers, Steve and Diane decide to send Carol Anne to live with her Aunt Patricia in Chicago. She moves to the skyscraper to stay with her aunt, Uncle Bruce, and Cousin Donna. A month had passed since Carol Anne moved in, and she had befriended the window washer. One morning, he waves at Carol Anne and descends a few flights after pressing the button on his rig. While she went to the window to check on him, the window washer looked up, revealing the face of Reverend Kane.
Startled, she sits on her bed and fiddles with her speak-n-spell when Aunt Pat walks into the room. She seemed to be living comfortably with her aunt’s family, often taking turns in picking the breakfast and sharing laughs with one another. As Carol Anne waits for the elevator with her relatives, Donna makes a comment on how she’s dressed like she’s going to the arctic. The conversation shifts to how they plan to dress for Aunt Pat’s art gallery opening.
Seeing the elevator too crowded, Bruce offers his pass key to Carol Anne, and she proceeds to start the freight elevator. As the lights suddenly go out and the elevator comes to a halt, disembodied laughter can be heard before the elevator starts moving again. While they move to a regular elevator, a crack in the mirror between the shafts catches the attention of a passerby. The kids reach the garage only to realize that they have missed their ride.
Meanwhile, Carol Anne doesn’t mind as she wasn’t looking forward to going to a special school. Her relatives were under the impression that she was sent to Chicago to attend a school for gifted children with emotional problems. Unaware of the poltergeist haunting revolving around her niece, she just assumed that her parents temporarily wanted the kid to stay outside the house.
In the new school, Carol Anne was encouraged to discuss her paranormal experiences with psychiatrist and teacher Dr. Seaton. Skeptical about the stories, he assumes Carol Anne is delusional. The constant discussions about the past had enabled Reverend Kane to find her once again, and he returns from the limbo he was put in.
Dr. Seaton didn’t believe in ghosts and is convinced that Carol Anne is a manipulative child, with the ability to perform mass hypnosis and convince people that they are under attack by ghosts. He thought of her as a trouble maker who creates mass hysteria. Tangina senses that Kane has returned and decides to travel across the country to protect the child as she always does.
This time, instead of using a TV channel or a toy telephone, Kane takes control of reflective surfaces to torment Carol Anne. He drains the building of heat and takes over the mirrors that cause the reflections of the people to act on their own. Kane tries to possess Carol Anne when she’s by herself in her room.
He uses the reflection on the mirror to control her, as the reflection creepily announces ‘we are back’. While struggling to let go, she hears Tangina telepathically telling her to break the mirror and she does so. She tries to escape by running through the garage, where she is spotted by Dana and Scott. Before they could help Carol Anne, they are pulled into the other side.
The adults, Aunt Pat, Uncle Bruce, the skeptical Dr. Seaton, and the psychic medium Tangina gather at the high-rise. While Tangina attempts to get the children back, Seaton blames the entire incident on Carol Anne, assuming she has staged the abduction. Scott emerges from a pool after getting released from the other side. Kane tricks Tangina to go into the other side by disguising himself as Carol Anne and releases Donna. Scott is sent home to his parents and it appears as if it was Donna’s reflection who returned from the other side.
The symbols on her clothes seem to be reversed. While Dr. Seaton tries to calm a traumatized Donna, Aunt Pat and Bruce rush to the mirror after seeing her reflection. Dr. Seaton rushes after them, thinking he has seen Carol Anne in the elevator. Just as he approaches the elevator door, he gets pushed down to his death into the empty shaft by Donna. It was Donna’s reflection who was released from the other side and she was working under the influence of Kane. She disappears into the mirror, with the reflection of Scott by her side.
Aunt Pat and Bruce continue to search for Carol Anne. Similar to the previous rescue attempts by Diane and Steve, Pat is forced to go into the other side to prove how much she loves her niece. She finds herself in a face-off against Kane, as Tangina offers him a chance at salvation by walking into the light with her. Pat is reunited with Carol Anne, Donna, and Bruce but Scott’s fate remains a mystery.
Heather O’Rourke, the actress portraying Carol Anne, passed away of a sudden illness after finishing her work on the film. Following her death, the film was temporarily shelved by the director during the post-production phase. The ending of the film had to be re-shot using a body double, because of intervention by the production house. The final film in the trilogy was dedicated to her memory.
After Carol Anne changed her location from the suburbs to a high-rise in Chicago, Kane had to upgrade his approach to contact her by taking control over the mirrors in the building. Despite taking an innovative route, the film failed to recreate the essence of its predecessors. The Freeling family and their love for one another added depth to the previous films whereas the urgency with Aunt Pat and her family understandably wasn’t as intense.
Even though the third part looks pale in comparison to the first two, it has its fair share of scares to be counted as a good horror movie. Those who remember watching the movie as a kid in the late 80s might recall being terrified to look at the mirror for quite some time.
Poltergeist (2015) – A Reboot of the Original Film
The Bowen family was searching for a new house to live in, and they moved in after finding one that fits their budget. During their first night at the house, they hear strange noises coming from the walls. Griffin, their 9-year-old son, comes across a box of clown dolls that were left behind in the house. The electricity in the house begins to flicker and malfunction in the middle of the night as an invisible force seems to move through the house.
Griffin wakes up because of the disturbances and finds Madison, his 6-year-old sister, interacting with someone invisible inside the television. Griffin unplugs the TV after hearing Madison say someone is coming. Madison declares ‘They are here,’ as the lights go completely out of control. When the parents go out for dinner with their friends the following evening, they learn that their house was built over a burial ground.
The graves had been moved to a different location. Back at the house, Kendra, their eldest daughter, hears strange noises coming from her phone.
She enters one of the rooms to investigate the source, only to find the floor cracking and the hands of corpses rising as they begin to pull at her feet. Griffin gets spooked to see the clown dolls moving by themselves and one of the dolls proceeds to attack him. Griffin somehow escapes from his room after destroying the doll and finds a frightened Madison crouched. As he leaves to get Kendra, Madison gets pulled into her closet and disappears into a void. She gets dragged into the darkness by spirits and drifts farther away from her room. The old tree outside the house suddenly comes to life and grabs Griffin out of the house.
Amy and Eric return to find their son being tossed around by a branch. While they rescue him from the tree, Kendra announces that Madison is nowhere to be found. They hear Madison’s voice calling them from inside the television and feel distraught. In an attempt to reunite with their daughter, they seek the help of paranormal researchers to bring her back.
As the researchers investigate the house, they conclude the involvement of a Poltergeist and call in Carrigan Burke for his expertise.
Making the reboot of a classic like the Poltergeist doesn’t come without its challenges. The expectations from those who loved the original are always sky high. It’s very rare for a remake or reboot to satisfy the fans of the original movie. In this version, the names of the characters have been changed and the tech has been upgraded but the gist of the story remains the same.
There are a number of parallels between the original and the reboot, including the missing daughter, a haunted tree, a poltergeist using the television to communicate with the child, the house being built on a burial ground, and a joker toy that attacks the kid. In the original movie, Robbie was attacked by the joker toy which tried to strangle him.
Even before the hauntings began, he was scared of how the toy looked and would often cover his face with a jacket before going to bed. The Joker toy in the remake is slightly more sinister and continues to haunt Griffin.
The reboot takes a lot of inspiration from the original but it isn’t an exact replica. It has rewritten the story to fit in with modern times. The reboot manages to scare you without relying too much on jump scares. You’ll be satisfied with the reboot if you watch it without comparing it to the original.
Future of the Franchise
The recent reboot of the classic has taught us that some films need to be left alone. Even the sequels in the franchise haven’t satisfied the fans as the original movie did. Even though the reboot did make some changes to the storyline, it still felt like watching the same story being retold. There’s no doubt about the abilities of the Russo brothers but are we prepared to watch the same story, thrice?
Especially since it hasn’t been that long since the reboot arrived and left the screens. As the Russo brothers are in talks about recreating the Tom Hooper – Steven Spielberg classic, it would be more interesting to see them remake the third movie.
Since their success with Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, we can count on the Russo brothers to give us a retelling of the third movie that isn’t scared to drift away from the original. There will be no complaints even if they decide to leave the Poltergeist alone and instead make an original horror movie.