Poltergeist II: The Other Side.”
Man. That movie.
For those unfamiliar, the first two “Poltergeist” films concern the Freeling family (headed by patriarch Craig T. Nelson of “Coach” fame), of which, for whatever reason, the members are constantly being possessed and attacked by evil demons who apparently don’t have many friends.
In retrospect, the original “Poltergeist” is a lot scarier, but two scenes from the overproduced sequel still linger in my adolescent subconscience. They’re both fairly ridiculous. The first concerns the boy in the Freeling family. He’s in the bathroom, brushing his teeth, when suddenly his braces come alive. The wires shoot out of his mouth and start twisting around him. By the time Coach comes to save the boy, he’s attached to the ceiling in some sort of evil, metal cocoon.
At roughly the same time in the film, Coach sits downstairs, drinking heavily from a tequila bottle. For whatever reason (demons?) he decides to drink the worm from the bottle. And then he becomes possessed and evil.
It is currently very chic to subject horror films to psychoanalysis. Under such a reading, the killer braces and evil worm scenes in “Poltergeist II” should be read as a manifestation of youthful fear. When you’re 9, everybody hates getting braces because they’re afraid they’ll hurt. Everybody hates worms because they’re disgusting. And to this day, I hate tequila, but that may have more to do with the fact that too much tequila turns me into some possessed and evil creature who likes vomiting and, incidentally, is prone to doing “The Worm” on kitchen floors (often at the same time).
Anyway. My point is that when you’re a kid, you’re susceptible to being scared by most anything. And that’s why it’s a shame that all the horror movies coming out now are rated “R” and seek more to gross us out than be creepy. The R-rated remake of “The Amityville Horror” still knows how certain images can terrify. Like “Poltergeist,” there are no deaths in the film (save the startling prologue, where a demented brother kills his entire family in cold blood).
But why would one go see a horror film? It’s essentially paying money to suffer for a prescribed amount of time. Horror films make you uncomfortable. They’re like roller coasters — you pay top dollar for 90 seconds of hell, except subjecting yourself to “Hide and Seek” means 90 minutes of torture, relieved only by the blackness of the end credits.
This latest “Amityville Horror” isn’t all that bad. Consider the “haunted house” genre. The scariest, without a doubt, is either the original 1959 “House on Haunted Hill” or 1963’s “The Haunting” before Jan de Bont got his filthy hands on it in 1999. These films work because of time-honored “atmosphere” — that impossible-to-recreate confluence of style, visuals and shocks that make a film spooky. The house in “The Amityville Horror,” with its peering windows, ventilation grates and creaky boathouse, is a creepy place. Director Andrew Douglas has a fantastic visual style; the best thing I can say about the film is that I only felt relieved when it was daytime or the family was away from the house.
Enjoying “The Amityville Horror” takes an obvious suspension of disbelief, and maybe it’s just because I’m becoming less crusty and more stupid, but the film’s flaws seemed only to make it more endearing. Its continuity borders on the experimental in its nonsensical, non-narrative progression.
There’s also the casting of Ryan Reynolds. I thought this guy was magnetic in “Van Wilder;” his every expression and seemingly ad-libbed comments singlehandedly legitimized the film. Here, the scariest thing about Reynolds is how any white guy can be so absolutely jacked.
Another movie I remember that unfairly scared the shit out of me was “Ernest Scared Stupid.” The film was about these fucking trolls that grabbed kids by the ankles and did terrible things to them. Somewhere in there was a subplot wherein Ernest tried to stop the trolls. In any case, this is horror at its subliminal best — affecting and haunting children for the rest of their lives.
How many adults will leave “Amityville” afraid to sleep alone? Not very many. Horror films are only interesting to impressionable children; the reason there aren’t any “good” ones is because we don’t allow them to scare our kids. The scariest movie of the last five years, “The Ring,” was PG-13. And name me one horror film that didn’t feature some sort of clairvoyant child in peril. “Amityville” may have a cheap ending, but it still reminds us jaded adults that all our fears stem from “Ernest” movies.
Communication junior Kyle Smith is the PLAY film columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
