Poltergeist (1982 Film Review)

1982 MGM/UA Entertainment Co.
Directed by: Tobe Hooper; Written by: Steven Spielberg, Michael Grais, and Mark Victor
Starring: JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, and Beatrice Straight
MPAA Rating: PG; Running Time: 114 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 7/10

The Freeling's are an All-American early 80's family. The kids kind-heartedly pick at each other. One of them has Star Wars sheets. The dad is a real-estate developer, and the mom goes to bed in a damn football jersey. Their dog steals chips. The mountains loom over their sleepy, hilly California suburb. They leave their TV on until the Star-Spangled banner and shots of Washington D.C. play out the nightly broadcast into white-noise. And then the voices come.
It's essentially accepted as a given at this point that Steven Spielberg directed Poltergeist, with credited director, Tobe Hooper, just providing a front, and support. Whatever the case, the majority of Poltergeist sure feels like a Spielberg film, especially the shots introducing The Freeling's neighborhood, and the ones that gets the viewer accustomed to the Freeling's happy home life. When odd stuff starts happening, it still feels like Spielberg, with the weird, spectral lights coming from the television set to abduct the Freeling's little daughter, Carol Anne, simply a stand-in for the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind...though the spaceships in the latter are more visually impressive than the weird animation effects of Poltergeist's abduction. And then, there's the hokiness...
Look, I love Spielberg's 70's and early 80's output as much as anyone, but Poltergeist's dragging, talk-heavy middle could have come from no one but him. He may not be credited as director, but he is as screenwriter, and the minutes-upon-minutes of "What do you think happens after we die?" conversations the characters have sound like they came straight from an elementary school playground. This dialogue matches the kind of schmaltzy sentimentality that would begin to plague Spielberg far more heavily in the 21st Century. Poltergeist's middle seems to bog down in the Freeling's living room for nearly an hour, as the desperate family employ the use of paranormal investigators and a psychic in order to rescue Carol Anne from the beyond.
It's only in the final twenty minutes that Poltergeist reaches its full potential, and has me saying, "Wait, you could have done this the whole time?" The surprise last act is frenzied, early 80's special-effects mayhem of the highest order, the kind of fun thrill-ride you expect with the parties involved here. The lag in momentum in the film's mid-section could have easily been countered by kicking off the chaos sooner. However, if you can take either a long bathroom or concessions break from the moment Carol Anne is abducted, til about 5 minutes before her rescue is attempted, you'll still see all the great "Look at this 80's neighborhood and family" stuff at the beginning and the spectacular finish. Those acts are can't miss.