{"id":1657,"date":"2020-10-27T15:00:37","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T21:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1657"},"modified":"2020-10-09T22:24:10","modified_gmt":"2020-10-10T04:24:10","slug":"movie-poltergeist-1982","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/27\/movie-poltergeist-1982\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Poltergeist (1982)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Poltergeist\"Poltergeist
<\/u><\/strong>Year: 1982
Rating: PG
Length: 114 minutes \/ 1.90 hours<\/p>\n

Some movies have spoilers, and then some movies have so deeply-ingrained themselves in the popular culture zeitgeist that it\u2019s nearly impossible to not<\/em> have some knowledge of them before actually sitting down and watching the film itself. Poltergeist<\/em> (1982) is just such a film for me. I\u2019ve seen it referenced on many different lists and other places that claim it to be a great horror film. I\u2019ve also seen it referenced and parodied in several places (like The Simpsons<\/em>). The combination of its notoriety and its parody meant that I had pretty much already seen this film before actually watching it.<\/p>\n

Since I already knew the \u201cbig reveal\u201d that caused the main characters\u2019 house to become haunted, I had to watch this movie with a slightly different focus. Mainly: how and why has this film stood the test of time? Sure, it dates itself sometimes with its early-1980s style; however, the special effects for its time were particularly top-notch (all things considered). While only one of these special effects doesn\u2019t seem that realistic by today\u2019s standards, the rest of them make me wonder how they pulled them off at the time.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s refreshing with Poltergeist<\/em> is its ability to be scary (albeit in a family-friendly way, ironically enough) but not resort to jump scares or gore like modern horror. Of course, its two sequels and 2015 remake apparently never lived up to its original creativity or timelessness. Still, while it\u2019s been referenced to death (har har) in popular culture, I can now honestly say that I\u2019ve seen this movie all the way through. Although this also means that I don\u2019t likely need to watch it again.<\/p>\n

Classic horror with notable special effects, I give Poltergeist<\/em> 3.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a01\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PoltergeistYear: 1982Rating: PGLength: 114 minutes \/ 1.90 hours Some movies have spoilers, and then some movies have so deeply-ingrained themselves in the popular culture zeitgeist that it\u2019s nearly impossible to not have some knowledge of them before actually sitting down and watching the film itself. Poltergeist (1982) is just such a film for me. I\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,22,2],"tags":[974,1960,332,1979,13,1978,566,8,375,1980],"class_list":["post-1657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21","category-3-5-stars","category-movie","tag-974","tag-american-dream","tag-horror","tag-house","tag-movie","tag-poltergeist","tag-pop-culture","tag-review","tag-special-effects","tag-suburbs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1657"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2320,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657\/revisions\/2320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}