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"POLTERGEIST" (2010) (Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams) (PG) QUICK TAKE: Horror/Thriller: A suburban California family is terrorized in their own home by paranormal activity. PLOT: The Freelings are a normal suburban California family in the early 1980s. Steve (CRAIG T. NELSON) works for a real estate company that is the developer of the community in which he and his family live. Carol (JOBETH WILLIAMS) is his wife and the mother of their three children, teenage Dana (DOMINIQUE DUNNE), eight-year-old Robbie (OLIVER ROBINS), and six-year-old Carol Anne (HEATHER O'ROURKE). The family starts to notice weird paranormal activity in the house. Carol Anne stares at TV screens in the middle of the night and talks to voices only she hears. Chairs move across a kitchen floor by themselves. One dark and stormy night, a backyard tree springs to life and snatches Robbie right out of his bed. When Steve and Diane go outside to rescue him, a malevolent force seizes Carol Anne and the girl disappears into a vortex that has formed in her bedroom closet. Steve and Diane first seek the help of a trio of paranormal psychologists, Dr. Lesh, Marty, and Ryan (BEATRICE STRAIGHT, MARTIN CASELLA, and RICHARD LAWSON) before turning to a mysterious "medium" named Tangina (ZELDA RUBINSTEIN) who claims to have "cleaned" houses like the Freelings before. Steve comes to suspect that the family house was built on a graveyard by his developer boss, Mr. Teague (JAMES KAREN). From that point on, the family hopes they can retrieve Carol Anne from the other dimension in which she's being held. WILL KIDS WANT TO SEE IT? Teens have been drawn to this film's horror elements for three decades, partly because of the deceptive PG rating. WHY THE MPAA RATED IT: PG The film was released in 1982, two years prior to the PG-13 rating and before the MPAA would specify the reasons why it would rate each movie. That said, there's profanity, violence, supernatural material, peril, drug use and smoking. CAST AS ROLE MODELS: CRAIG T. NELSON plays a husband and father whose family is terrorized by malevolent paranormal activity. It hurts him greatly that he can't help his youngest daughter when she is seized by a vengeful life-force. He is a casual drinker and smoker who also engages in brief recreational marijuana use. JOBETH WILLIAMS plays a wife and mother who becomes a vital emotional link for her 6-year-old daughter once she is seized by an evil poltergeist. She is also a casual drinker who smokes marijuana with her husband from time to time. HEATHER O'ROURKE plays an innocent young girl who is kidnapped by vengeful apparitions and forced to exist on an ethereal plane. OLIVER ROBBINS plays the Freelings' young son, who has a number of fears which the ghosts of the film use against them. They include being creeped out by thunderstorms, the creepy tree in the backyard, and the clown puppet in his room. DOMINIQUE DUNNE plays the Freelings' headstrong teenage daughter, who the ghosts leave largely alone. ZELDA RUBINSTEIN plays a psychic medium who plays a key role in helping the Freelings save their daughter from evil spirits who want to do her harm. BEATRICE STRAIGHT, DENNIS LAWSON, and MARTIN CASELLA play paranormal psychologists who the Freelings enlist to help with their ghost problem. JAMES KAREN plays Steve's developer-boss, who we come to learn cut corners by building over top of a graveyard. CAST, CREW, & TECHNICAL INFO HOW OTHERS RATED THIS MOVIE Curious if this title is entertaining, any good, and/or has any artistic merit? Then read OUR TAKE of this film. (Note: The "Our Take" review of this title examines the film's artistic merits and does not take into account any of the possibly objectionable material listed below). OUR WORD TO PARENTS: The following is a brief summary of the content found in this horror-thriller that was rated PG in 1982, but would almost certainly get at least a PG-13 today. Profanity consists of at least 4 "s" words, while other expletives and colorful phrases are also uttered. There are a few views of a woman in her panties. Violence consists mostly of people being seized by paranormal forces and flung about rooms or shocked by household items such as doorknobs and banisters. A sequence in which a young boy is seized by a possessed backyard tree leaves the kid's nose quite bloody, while man pulls his face apart (with grisly results, although this is all imagined). Such scenes and moments of potential peril (many involving young children being threatened and put at risk) will likely be unsettling and/or suspenseful for various viewers. Bad attitudes are present, as is some potentially imitative behavior, various thematic elements and tense family material. Drinking is present, as is cigarette and marijuana smoking. If you're still concerned about the film and its appropriateness for yourself or anyone else in your home who may be interested in seeing it, we suggest that you take a closer look at our detailed listings for more specific information regarding the film's content. For those prone to visually induced motion sickness, a strobe light effect is employed during numerous sequences, particularly those involving TV sets left on overnight. ALCOHOL OR DRUG USE Steve and Diane smoke marijuana in their bedroom after putting the kids to bed. A neighborhood man carries a large quantity of beer while riding a bicycle. When some neighborhood kids trip him up, he drops the beer and some of the cans explode on the street and shoot beer in the air. Beer cans are visible on a table at Steve's football party. Steve drinks a beer while giving Dr. Lesh, Ryan, and Marty a tour of his house. Diane and Dr. Lesh drink from a flask. Although neither specifies what is being consumed, we can assume it is some kind of spirit. Diane then shows Dr. Lesh that the flask is empty the next morning, implying that the two drank the entire contents. When listening to Tangina, Steve is shown drinking from a bottle of liquor. BLOOD/GROSS STUFF We see Carol Anne's dead parakeet lying on his back in his cage. Robbie wants to wait a couple of weeks for Carol Anne's dead parakeet to "rot" so they can then dig the bird up and look at his bones. Steve has multiple mosquito bites after talking with his neighbor. Robbie's nose is severely bloodied after his backyard tree comes to life and snatches him out of his bed. For a number of scenes afterward, a very red wound across the bridge of his nose is visible. Marty returns from the upstairs of the Freeling house with bite marks on his abdomen (from an unseen paranormal attack). A raw steak sits on the Freelings' kitchen counter and suddenly sprouts maggots. So, too, does a drumstick that Marty drops on the floor. This causes Marty to vomit in a nearby sink (although the camera is positioned in a way to his backside so we don't actually see any throw-up). Marty looks at himself in a mirror and notices a bloody gash on his left cheek. He is then compelled to start ripping away chunks of his face as blood is shown spilling into the sink. He starts to scream and suddenly his face is alright. It was just an illusion. Dimensional doorways form in two different parts of the Freeling house, and Tangina sends two tennis balls and a rope through from one side to the other. All three emerge from the other side with a weird, slime-like goo on them. Diane and Carol Anne are covered in goo and slime after emerging from "the other side." Ectoplasmic goo and slime oozes from the door frame of Robbie and Carol Anne's bedroom closet. Diane eventually makes it out of the house and into a pounding rainstorm, but falls into the hole that has been dug for a backyard swimming pool. From out of the rainwater and mud pops up numerous coffins and skeletons. As Diane and her two young kids try and escape the house, coffins pop up out of the floors and open to reveal rotting corpses. DISRESPECTFUL/BAD ATTITUDE A group of neighborhood kids trip up a man on a bicycle using a remote-controlled car. Diane finds Carol Anne's parakeet in his cage and attempts to flush him down the toilet before the little girl finds out. But Carol Anne catches her before she can do so. In front of Carol Anne, Robbie asks Diane if in a few weeks time they can dig up the little girl's dead parakeet and see its bones. Rather than eat the waffle his mom cooked for him, Robbie feeds into the family dog under the table. Carol Anne, meanwhile, throws her dry cereal at her brother. Dana gives a group of leering day laborers the middle finger gesture. One of the men working on the Freelings' backyard pool pokes his head in the family's kitchen window, pours himself a cup of coffee and then tastes a sauce that Diane is cooking on the stove. Mr. Teague shows Steve the parcel where the next phase of community development is to take place. When Steve asks what they'll do with the graveyard that currently occupies the tract, Teague responds that they'll just move it and all of the coffins buried to an existing cemetery five miles away. Marty, freaked out by the ghostly activity in the Freeling house, abruptly quits Dr. Lesh's team and is not heard from again. Steve doesn't hide his feelings that he thinks Tangina is a fraud, even testing her by mentally thinking of an answer to a question she poses to see if she can read minds. We come to learn that Teague has lied to the survivors of people whose loved ones were buried in the last cemetery he built over. He moved the tombstones to a new graveyard, but opted not to dig up the coffins in order to save money. Diane pleads with her neighbor, Ben, and his wife to help her save her kids. But they do nothing. FRIGHTENING SCENES Scenes listed under "Violence," "Blood/Gross Stuff" and "Jump Scenes" may be unsettling, suspenseful or scary to younger viewers and/or those with low tolerance levels for such material. Late one night, Carol Anne is shown talking to a TV screen with snow on it (an old term for when stations would sign off for the evening), and her creepy conversation wakes up the rest of the family. A lightning storm that illuminates the scary-looking tree in the Freelings backyard keeps Robbie up. The tree's silhouette on the boy's wall makes it look like a large, skeletal hand. Robbie is also scared of a large clown puppet that sits near the foot of his bed. He throws a jacket over the clown. Carol Anne is once again called to a TV set left on past sign-off by voices only she can hear. When she reaches out, a ghostly hand shoots out of the TV and makes a snatching motion. Ghostly vapors then emanate from the screen and fill the room, followed by a powerful beam that burns a small hole into the bedroom wall and causes the house to rumble as if an earthquake is happening. Robbie's milk glass bursts in his hand at the breakfast table. He then looks down to see that both his fork and spoon have been bent out of shape. Diane is bewildered when all of the chairs at the kitchen table have been pulled out and away from the table. She pushes each one in, walks away, and when she turns back around, the chairs have been stacked atop the table. Diane demonstrates for Steve the paranormal activity, first by placing a chair in a circle and watching it move across the kitchen floor, then having the same force propel Carol Anne across the floor. The creepy backyard tree springs to life and violently snatches Robbie from his bed. As Steve and Diane try to rescue him, a tornado touches down in the backyard. With that diversion, the house's evil life-force sucks Carol Anne into her bedroom closet where a vortex has formed. The family begins a frantic search for Carol Anne, culminating in Diane, Steve, and Dana finding what they think is the girl's corpse under a blanket in her closet. They pull away the blanket and it's just Robbie's creepy clown puppet. Robbie realizes that Carol Anne is no longer in the physical world when he hears his sister's voice coming from a TV set. Steve opens the door of Carol Anne and Robbie's bedroom to show Dr. Lesh, Marty, and Ryan toys and furniture and other items floating around the room on their own. One scene later, the three scientists are creeped out when a coffee pot moves across the table on its own. Carol Anne's disembodied voice is heard by both the family and Dr. Lesh and her team of scientists. The little girl says that "something" is with her, and her voice then begins to travel all over the room and house in a very creepy fashion followed by a roar and a massive wind that Diane identifies as Carol Anne "passing through her." Marty returns from the upstairs of the Freeling house with bite marks on his abdomen (from an unseen paranormal attack). After a raw piece of steak and a cooked chicken leg sprouts maggots, Marty goes to splash water on his face in the bathroom and is suddenly compelled to start ripping away large chunks of his face (but this is just an illusion and he's fine). Ghostly apparitions float down the Freelings living room staircase. Testing that Carol Anne's bedroom is still haunted, Diane opens the door to the room only to be greeted immediately by a frighteningly shrill scream and a mighty gust of wind. She shuts the door immediately. Tangina gives a long, creepy speech about what Diane and Steve face in trying to get Carol Anne back, warning them that there is a malevolent beast that appears to the little girl in the form of a child who lies to her. Carol Anne's disembodied voice expresses fear that something is after her. Diane ventures into the vortex to try and find and save Carol Anne. A rope is tied around her and she goes in, but Steve panics and starts pulling on the rope. That results in the head of a roaring, skull-like monster springing out of Carol Anne and Robbie's closet and scares Steve and Tangina. Diane and Carol Anne then fall out of the ceiling and land hard on the floor, covered in goo, and are rushed to a bath where Steve worries that they might be dead (but they come to). Robbie is scared when the creepy clown puppet is no longer sitting at the foot of his bed. After he leans down to look under his bed, the clown is shown lying next to him and attacks him from behind, wrapping his elongated arms around his neck and pulling him to the ground and under the bed. The poltergeist seizes Diane and pulls her up her bedroom wall, onto the room's ceiling, and down the next wall against her will. Free of its hold, she falls down the stairs into the living room. She gets up to go back upstairs and the banister shocks her. She reaches out to the front door knob and it shocks her, too, propelling her several feet backwards where she lands hard on her back. Diane eventually makes it out of the house and into a pounding rainstorm, but falls into the hole that has been dug for a backyard swimming pool. From out of the rainwater and mud pops up numerous coffins and skeletons. Another dimensional portal opens in the closet of Robbie and Carol Anne's shared bedroom and tries to suck both children in. Diane is able to convince her two kids to join hands and she pulls them to safety. As Diane and her two young kids try and escape the house, multiple coffins pop up out of the floors and open to reveal rotting corpses. As Steve struggles to put the family car in reverse to escape the driveway of their imploding home, out pops a corpse from the garage onto the hood of their vehicle and its skull presses up against the front windshield. GUNS/WEAPONS Carol Anne watches a war movie on TV with soldiers firing guns and munitions exploding. IMITATIVE BEHAVIOR Phrases: "Sh*t!" "Oh, sh*t!" "Ah, sh*t!" "Steve, you look like sh*t," "They're here…" "Damn it!" "Kiss my ass!" "Leave her alone, you bastard!" "You son of a bitch!" "Who the hell is this guy?" "He won't take 'Go to hell' for an answer," "Jesus H. Christ," "For Christ's sake!" "Thanks a lot, jerk," "You're a barf bag!" "You're a doggie bag!" "Aw, brother!" and "I hate you!" Some kids may be enticed to copy certain scares as a way to frighten others. Steve is shown having fallen asleep in front of the TV. Dana, meanwhile, has fallen asleep with an open bag of potato chips in her bed. A group of neighborhood kids trip up a man on a bicycle using a remote-controlled car. When he finds out his remote-control is on the same frequency as his neighbor Ben's (circa 1982 TV technology), Steve gets into a brief "clicker war" with the man in which the two flip back and forth between an NFL football game and "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood." One of Steve's football buddies rages that he bet "his life" on the football game they are watching. Robbie climbs a tall tree in the Freelings' backyard. Dana tries to hide the fact that she is on the phone with a friend late at night, but Steve catches her and tells her to get off. Rather than eat the waffle his mom cooked for him, Robbie feeds into the family dog under the table. Carol Anne, meanwhile, throws her dry cereal at her brother. Robbie and Carol Anne razz each other over breakfast, with Robbie calling his sister a "barf bag" and Carol Anne retorting that Robbie is a "doggie bag." Dana gives a group of leering day laborers the middle finger gesture. Diane tells Carol Anne not to sit so close to a snowy TV screen because it is harmful to her, then Diane changes the channel and puts a violent war movie on. One of the men working on the Freelings' backyard pool pokes his head in the family's kitchen window, pours himself a cup of coffee and then tastes a sauce that Diane is cooking on the stove. Carol Anne lies in bed with a Luke Skywalker action figure in her mouth. JUMP SCENES A loud clap of thunder sends Robbie and Carol Anne into bed with Steve and Diane. When Carol Anne reaches out to the voices inside her TV, a ghostly hand shoots out of the set and makes a sudden snatching motion. A few seconds later, a powerful beam emanates from the TV, burns a hole in the bedroom wall and causes the entire house to shudder violently as if in an earthquake. Robbie's milk glass bursts in his hand at the breakfast table. A raw steak and a cooked chicken leg sprout crawling maggots, scaring Marty. Marty then goes into the bathroom to splash water on his face and is suddenly compelled to begin ripping away chunks of his face (but this is just an illusion and he's fine). Testing that Carol Anne's bedroom is still haunted, Diane opens the door to the room only to be greeted immediately by a frighteningly shrill scream and a mighty gust of wind. She shuts the door immediately. The head of a roaring, skull-like monster springs out of Carol Anne and Robbie's closet and scares Steve and Tangina. Robbie is scared when the creepy clown puppet is no longer sitting at the foot of his bed. After he leans down to look under his bed, the clown is shown lying next to him and attacks him from behind, wrapping his elongated arms around his neck and pulling him to the ground and under the bed. Skeletons pop out of the large hole that has been dug where the Freelings were planning a pool, frightening Diane. As Diane tries to escape the family house with Robbie and Carol Anne, multiple coffins pop out of the floors of the home with rotting corpses revealed to be inside each of them. As Steve struggles to put the family car in reverse to escape the driveway of their imploding home, out pops a corpse onto the hood of their vehicle and its skull presses up against the front windshield. MUSIC (SCARY/TENSE) An extreme amount of loud, scary, often foreboding music occurs throughout the film. MUSIC (INAPPROPRIATE) None. PROFANITY At least 4 "s" words, 2 hells, 2 S.O.B.s, 1 ass, 1 damn, and 1 use each of "Jesus H. Christ" and "For Christ sakes." SEX/NUDITY Diane wears a sexy nightgown to bed that shows some cleavage. Steve is shirtless as he reads a Ronald Reagan biography and smokes pot with Diane. Laborers who are in the Freelings' backyard digging a pool leer at the teenage Dana. Steve and Diane share a long and passionate kiss before Diane ventures into the vortex to try and save Carol Anne. When Steve says the family will be staying at the Holiday Inn, teenage Dana smiles mischievously and says, "I remember that place," implying that she had stayed there, possibly with a boyfriend. Diane draws a bath and takes off her pants, revealing her panties. Off-screen, she takes off the rest of her clothes and gets into a bathrobe. She then takes that off, with the camera placed at her feet so as not to reveal any real nudity, and gets into the tub. There is then a long pan shot around the front of the tub as she enjoys a long soak. Later, Diane is attacked by the poltergeist while she lays on a bed wearing just a football jersey and a pair of panties. Dana exits her boyfriend's sports car and a hickey is clearly visible on her neck. SMOKING Steve smokes a cigarette while talking to Dr. Lesh, Marty, and Ryan at the university. Steve sports a cigarette behind his right ear as he gives Dr. Lesh, Marty, and Ryan a tour of his home. TENSE FAMILY SCENES For nearly the film's entire running time, the main family is put in seemingly mortal jeopardy by vengeful ghosts haunting their home. For much of the film's running time, the Freelings' youngest daughter is held against her will by malevolent spirits in another dimension. Her disembodied voice is often heard throughout the house, pleading for help, and her parents worry about her. Carol Anne and Robbie are so scared of a violent thunderstorm that they end up sleeping with Steve and Diane at one point. A backyard tree comes to life and snatches Steve and Diane's son out of his bed, and the two parents are forced to risk life and limb to get the boy out of the tree's branched clutches. Steve kisses Diane good-bye for what he fears could be a last time as she agrees to go into the vortex and retrieve Carol Anne herself. Diane and Carol escape the Other Side, but are covered in goo and slime and Steve briefly fears they may be dead. While Steve and Dana are both out, the evil spirits make one final attempt to claim Carol Anne (and this time Robbie, too), forcing Diane to fight off the ghosts alone. TOPICS TO TALK ABOUT Paranormal activity. Child abduction. Recreational marijuana use. Loss of a family pet. The Afterlife. VIOLENCE The creepy backyard tree springs to life and violently snatches Robbie from his bed. As Steve and Diane try to rescue him, the house's evil life-force sucks Carol Anne into her closet where a vortex has formed. Off-camera, Marty is bitten by an entity in the Freeling house that he can only describe as "something." Marty looks in a mirror and is compelled to rip away large chunks of his face with his bare hands until it is revealed that it was just an elaborate illusion. At Tangina's urging, Steve threatens to spank Carol Anne if she doesn't respond to him. Diane ventures into the vortex to try and find and save Carol Anne. A rope is tied around her and she goes in, but Steve panics and starts pulling on the rope. That results in the head of a roaring, skull-like monster springing out of Carol Anne and Robbie's closet and scares Steve and Tangina. Diane and Carol Anne then fall out of the ceiling and land hard on the floor, covered in goo, and are rushed to a bath where Steve worries that they might be dead (but they come to). Robbie is scared when the creepy clown puppet is no longer sitting at the foot of his bed. After he leans down to look under his bed, the clown is shown lying next to him and attacks him from behind, wrapping his elongated arms around his neck and pulling him to the ground and under the bed. The poltergeist seizes Diane and pulls her up her bedroom wall, onto the room's ceiling, and down the next wall against her will. Free of its hold, she falls down the stairs into the living room. She gets up to go back upstairs and the banister shocks her. She reaches out to the front door knob and it shocks her, too, propelling her several feet backwards where she lands hard on her back. Robbie turns his anger on the demonic clown puppet and proceeds to literally beat the stuffing out of it, yelling, "I hate you!" while punching the clown over and over again. Steve grabs Teague by the collar and manhandles him while accusing him of building the Freeling family home over top of a graveyard. The entire Freeling house violently implodes and gets sucked into another dimension. Reviewed off DVD / Posted October 29, 2010