Poltergeist: Critic Reviews

Poltergeist is like a thoroughly enjoyable nightmare, one that you know that you can always wake up from, and one in which, at the end, no one has permanently been damaged. It's also witty in a fashion that Alfred Hitchcock might have appreciated.

Hooper and Spielberg hold our interest by observing the everyday rituals of this family so closely that, since the family seems real, the weird events take on a certain credibility by association.

Though the shocks are well conveyed, it's the sweetness that lingers, making this the first cute and cuddly entry in the genre.

Given the talents, Poltergeist is an annoying film because it could have been so much better.

One of the all-time great haunted house movies.

...a compelling and consistently creepy piece of work...

Spielberg clockwork: great suburbs, great special effects, great abuse of an expositive score, great overuse of the slow push-in, great hot mom, great irrelevant dad, great plucky little kids.

Think of it more as a fun-ride than a horror movie.

Twenty-five years on, the film is still looking remarkably good %u2013 and, I'm betting sales of clown dolls have never quite recovered.

After a quarter-century, Poltergeist remains one of the most popular movies whose reputation rests almost exclusively on behind-the-scenes diversions.

It's a highly effective and uncommonly emotional horror film, and in the summer of 1982, I preferred it to Spielberg's more universally admired E.T.

So darn good it makes me wish Spielberg hadn't given up on the horror genre.

A surprisingly yet successfully restrained lesson in how to haunt a house.

At first this takes the form of your classic poltergeist activity (moved furniture, that kind of thing), but it becomes weirder.

A vapid, silly horror movie with occasional moments of promise that ultimately fails due to an overdose of cuteness.

It is consistently redeemed by its creator's dazzling sense of craft.

Pull your face off and wallow in the creepy goodness.

Hooper's skill with gore combined with Spielberg's ability to sanitize anything into family-friendliness makes Poltergeist a smash horror hit -- and it's rated PG.

That it's all hokum gets washed aside by the believable and perceptive family value story set in bland suburbia.

Cut from the Spielberg mold.

J'aurais prefere voir quelque chose de plus sombre et de plus serieux. Dommage.