The Scariest Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: Halloween Weekend Repertory Cinema Picks
Poltergeist (1982)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Much ink has been spilled over the years regarding the plentiful subtext of Tobe Hooper’s—or, depending on your perspective, cowriter/coproducer Steven Spielberg’s—original Poltergeist: the middle-class all-American family jarred out of its conformist comfort zone, the soul-sucking evils of television, the chickens coming home to roost for the sleepy Cuesta Verde town built on a former cemetery. Less remarked on, though, is its spiritual side. The Freelings’ battle to restore order to their lives takes place in an arena that’s like a state of purgatory for the souls haunting the home, trapped as they are between death and the afterlife. They’re diverted from their inevitable path by what medium Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) calls young Carol Anne’s (Heather O’Rourke) “life force,” represented on the ground by her disembodied voice floating through electrical particles in the air after she’s sucked through the souls’ portal in her bedroom closet. In this context, her parents’ (JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson) rescue attempts represent a broadening of spiritual awareness on their part beyond the confines of their purely secular existence. It’s parenthood elevated to the level of the divine—though, if the physical rotting corpses that erupt at its conclusion is any indication, the God of Poltergeist is far from a benevolent one. Kenji Fujishima (October 30, 3pm; November 3, 9pm; November 5, 6:45pm at Anthology Film Archives’s “The Medium is the Massacre” [presented by Screen Slate])