I've read several reviews of Poltergeist and most people (including Siskel & Ebert)don't seem to have seen the same film as i did! All the criticism surrounding the storyline as how ridiculous and unbelievable it is. Well it's a ghost story, although i've always felt it was closer to a modern day fable in which the parents have to prove their love for their daughter going so far as to having to go to another dimension to retrieve her (well, the mother does that). People keep saying that the ghosts are in the TV and that Carol Anne was sucked into the TV, for Christ's sake, have these people actually watched the film? Another thing is that some critics complain that after the film was over they still didn't get what the spirits wanted and why they targeted the little girl. What about the sequence between Steve Freeling and his boss and the monologue delivered by Tangina where she EXPLAINS what is going on?! Sure, the film is not perfect, there's that infamous edit jump, too much cutesy with the burial of the bird and the lack of complaint from the neighbours about the thundering, thumping, screaming sounds that go on in the house, but it is a fable people! The acting is great, we really care about the characters, and because of some great dramatic sequences with Diane Freeling (brilliantly portrayed by JoBeth Williams)we realize that (SURPRISE!) the film isn't so much about the ghosts and (iconic) special effects, as it is about the drama of parents thrown into a supernatural situation they never saw coming and having to bring their daughter, that they hear THROUGH the TV (she's NOT IN the TV), back into our world. The action sequences are greatly imaginative and entertaining, Jerry Goldsmith's score is his best, being horrific, tense, spectral, childlike and such a masterpiece. I do love this film and wish that people would actually see it instead of making erroneous assumptions about it.
