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Top Critics (5)
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Fresh (52)
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DVD (25)
The film delivers honest special-effects shocks without forfeiting its good nature.
Given the talents, Poltergeist is an annoying film because it could have been so much better.
Though the shocks are well conveyed, it's the sweetness that lingers, making this the first cute and cuddly entry in the genre.
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.
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.
A frightening, supernatural horror film that defined a generation.
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.
...more of an extravaganza than it is a horror flick. (Blu-ray Edition)
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.
Though its special features have apparently crossed over into the next spectral plane, the image of the 25th anniversary Poltergeist DVD will have you gazing into the light.
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.
It's one of my favorites, and I still love it...
So darn good it makes me wish Spielberg hadn't given up on the horror genre.
This 25th anniversary disc needn't have been the pointless milestone it is.
At first this takes the form of your classic poltergeist activity (moved furniture, that kind of thing), but it becomes weirder.
A surprisingly yet successfully restrained lesson in how to haunt a house.
A vapid, silly horror movie with occasional moments of promise that ultimately fails due to an overdose of cuteness.
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