POLTERGEIST

The quiet Freeleng family is at the center of a strange situation: some mysterious phenomena, initially harmless, manifest themselves in the house where they have recently moved, and the situation deteriorates when the youngest daughter, little Carol, disappears without a trace. Only her voice remains, which seems to come from the television! Only after long trials and thanks to the help of some experts in paranormal phenomena and a medium will the situation return to normal, perhaps... For the first time, Tobe Hooper had a high budget to direct a horror film - it is enough to say that the film's producer was Steven Spielberg, who also wrote the screenplay - but he only partly managed to be up to the task. The Tobe Hooper of this film does not even seem a distant relative of the director who directed the violent and delirious "Don't Open That Door". In "Poltergeist", the gruesome and disturbing sequences to which Hooper had accustomed us in his beginnings ("Don't Open That Door", "That Motel Near the Swamp") are completely missing, everything is a bit too "Movie for All". It remains, however, without a doubt a good product, at times engaging and with special effects - curated by George Lucas' ILM - at the forefront, which ultimately prove to be the most successful element of the film: the most disparate objects fly everywhere and smash against the walls of the rooms; the force of gravity is completely absent, while a ghostly esophagus connects the television to the world of the dead. "Poltergeist" will always be remembered as a dazzling saraband of special effects, but certainly not as a terrifying film!