Welcome to the first (and long overdue) Millennial Morgan Plays Catch Up! I decided to make my first review in this series over the 1982 classic Poltergeist because I’d bought the dvd around last Halloween and still hadn’t watched it. Earlier this summer, in the early hours of the morning, my (fourteen year old) brother and I decided to finally watch Poltergeist before we went to bed.
It was exactly the prime time to watch a horror movie, because the dark and quiet that accompany the late hour usually help keep the viewer on edge, and make them more fearful, yet we didn’t find the movie particularly scary. The clown doll was really the only part I found unsettling. My mom was upset when we told her this the next day,haha. However, unlike some movies that I watch and am extremely let down by because of how hyped up they were, I do understand all the love this movie gets, and didn’t feel like I wasted my time watching it. It’s a very simple, and for the most part, a very real feeling story, and was one of the first of its kind. Prior to watching Poltergeist I suspected the movie to be filled with the cheesiness and subpar (to current day movie) effects that you can find in all older movies. Of course the special effects in Poltergeist were better than most, and some,like the skeletons coming to life, were even better than in the remake (which I watched the next day), but others like the ghost and closet I didn’t like at all. As a whole I did really enjoy the movie, and it was very similar to what I expected it to be.
I think Poltergeist was the perfect movie to start off this series because my views on it are very obviously the way they are because of my age and the kinds of movies I’ve grown up with. Nowadays there are paranormal movies coming out left and right, and I’ve seen just about all of them. Compared to these more recent movies, Poltergeist had a not so scary story with alright effects, but compared to other 80’s horror movies it’s top notch. So for me, that leaves Poltergeist towards the middle, as a movie that I wasn’t head over heels about, but will definitely watch again.
I rate Poltergeist at 5.6/10 as opposed to IMDB’s rating of 7.4/10.
