They're here!!!!!
3.5/4 stars

In the seventies, Horror was the hot "genre" to make a film in. Musicals and family films were good fun but many people wanted danger and chills while watching a film that combines terror with fear. A combination most popular with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The films could be good fun but the plot was as threadbare as the acting. Poltergiest is a film that can appeal to many more people then simple horror movies. It is centred around a family of different ages. It starts pleasantly yet the youngest child Carol Anne talks unnaturally to a dead television screen. Slowly everything blends the music is Oscar worthy and brilliant for the mood. The setting is not isolated as such but the film is in two different worlds. The real life and the an in-between land of people wanting to move away from the light. The screenplay sizzles with quotes such as "they're here" "stay away from the light" "you son of a bitch. you left the bodies but you only moved the headstones." The "kidnap" or "abduction" of Carol Anne is a parents nightmare and the secondary characters who deal in the "supernatural" understand the parents fear creating a blend of subtly and fear is brilliant and terrifying to watch.
The build up of tension starts with the "tv people" entering their home and making minor changes to their life's (moving the furniture etc.) Soon trees and clowns all personify to effect the family and try and take Carol Anne into the light. The objects of fear are natural fears (both clowns and skeletons are enough to make you scream at the top of your lungs. Normality never quite remains intact in this film but i would class this as the greatest horror movie. The last 15 minutes literally keep you hanging as you watch the Freeling Family desperate to leave the home that they built. It still holds up and is a pleasure to watch. The two sequels followed and they are dreadful to say the least. Only when you have a film complete with engaging characters, acting of calibre, effects to hold your breath, a score of enchantment and the screenplay and story so gripping you know you're in for a good two hours of chilling and brilliant entertainment. The sequels seem to burn away the cast as it was the "Carol Anne" collection. Whereas it is about the lives of a family. A family story that is similar yet different to a movie about a child abduction, this is simply more inventive and enigmatic. Well it's definitely very good!

Review by mdtinney