American Poltergeists and Vengeful Demons

Supernatural International

As those who have already visited this blog probably know, I am very interested in horror as a film genre. I think it's a great bridge between high and low forms of culture, the popular and the obscure, the entertaining and the artsy. Horror can provide shocking, visceral thrills or unnervingly probe the human condition, with the best of the genre able to do both. I've also previously stated that I find the best horror films to be those with the broadest grounding in reality, the most obvious of which can be found in the sub-genre called "psychological horror". Fear is an innate aspect of the human condition and, as films like Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965) show, we are the only thing to be truly afraid of. Reading the works of Oliver Sacks or seeing some of Derren Brown's magic is some of the easiest to find proof of this, highlighting both the suggestibility and fallibility of the human mind. Whilst we consciously imagine ourselves to be entirely rational, we can never escape what lies beneath.

However, when horror does make forays into fantasy, it doesn't always mean a complete departure from reality. For instance, in Jennifer Kent's The Babadook (2014), the eponymous creature haunting the widowed single mother protagonist is a manifestation of grief. In other words, a projection of real human emotions. In a sense, all the best fantastical horror films are in fact psychological ones; the things that go bump in the night feed from our inescapable feelings of fear, desire, hatred. I find Ghosts to be, in some instances, the most obvious example of this. Their intangible, mystical quality removes them from the physical world and instead they occupy the psychological worlds of those that they haunt. Unlike Vampires or Werewolves, many people still believe in Ghosts and they are tied deeply into spirituality. Whatever your own opinions are on their existence, there's no denying their influence on our ability to connect with our surroundings. When it comes to sites of historical importance, or even places of personal significance, we often feel some sort of "presence", sometimes going as far to call a place "haunted". There's something deeply romantic about the idea of Ghosts, they result from a complicated mixture of feelings both primitive and artistic. The form they take derives from just how bizarre the mind can be, the emotional and irrational responses it takes towards places and events. In many instances Ghosts are, in fact, a by-product of psychological horror.

In this blog post, I will be examining two films that feature Ghosts; Poltergeist (1982) and Paranormal Activity (2007). This is part of an effort designed to ascertain how the supernatural is represented on film, which I will continue with over the next few weeks. The invention of photography allowed us to indulge our obsession with the supernatural, causing a trend in "Spirit photography", where the deceased were caught on film in spirit form making contact with the living. From this, one could say that the supernatural and film go hand in hand. Unlike the human mind, film cannot lie, giving Ghosts an unequivocal presence in reality. Over time, the supernatural has evolved on film. Different types of Ghost have emerged with different characteristics and behaviours, often highly affected by the places and people they're involved with. The two aforementioned films have a lot in common through the roles their Ghostly presences take, and one can determine a surprising amount about the cultures from which they originate.

Poltergeist (1982, dir. Tobe Hooper)

Directed by Tobe Hooper and produced by Steven Speilberg, Poltergeist is one of the most recognisable horror films out there, inspiring two sequels and a recent remake. Firmly entrenched in the canon of 80s US pop culture, it has been heavily referenced since its initial release, most notably in a spoof episode of Family Guy, Petergeist. In comparison to The Shining, as another famous ghost film from the same decade Poltergeist differs radically in its approach to the genre, highlighting the key aesthetic differences between Speilberg and Kubrick.

The plot follows a family from Orange County who live in a part of suburbia recently built by the company the father works for. One night, after the family have all fallen asleep, the youngest daughter awakes to see that the TV has been left on, tuned to static after programming has finished. She begins to communicate with it when suddenly a ghostly hand appears from the screen, it shoots from the TV set into the wall of the bedroom causing an earthquake. The family all wake up as the daughter turns round and announces, "They're here." Later on, the Mother begins to experience strange things happening in the house, including chairs being stacked up on the table, cutlery bent inexplicably out of shape and a mysterious force that pulls objects across the kitchen floor. Then, one night, the occurrences intensify violently during a storm; the son almost gets eaten by a tree that comes to life and the youngest daughter is sucked into a portal that opens up in her bedroom closet. The family contact a group of parapsychologists who attempt to make contact with the daughter and rescue her from the supernatural realm. Then, after the Father's boss explains to him his plans to erect new properties nearby on a cemetery, saying that the headstones can just be moved, things start to fall into place.

Poltergeist is a radical departure for Tobe Hooper from his previous film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), a lot more family oriented and oozing with Speilbergian trademarks. Unlike the former's raw, relentless sadism, this film is consistently good-natured, showing a family brought together to combat dark, malevolent forces. Rather than psychologically implied nastiness, everything is shown on screen, a phantasmagoria of 80s special effects which, while heavily dated by today's standards, are ten times as fun and magical than the reductive CGI we're seemingly stuck with today. The colourful production is topped off by an imposing score that holds our hand along the way, telling us what to feel and when.

Overall, the film is a paranormal-themed romp more than anything, providing the audience with plenty of upbeat thrills and few authentic chills. In this sense, it fits into Speilberg's oeuvre and, as a result, it suffers from a tendency to turn anything truly unnerving into sentimental mush. Good, American spirit endures and the music constantly reminds us of this, invading scenes with clear cut melodious moralising. For the most part, it's a fun film with an awesome ending (conjuring the spirit of Sam Raimi), however fans of doom and gloom will not be impressed.

The film is very telling about Hollywood's approach to the supernatural. Ghost stories usually generate their chills from the minimal; quiet knocks and brief glimpses, but Poltergeist completely subverts this with its heavy reliance on effects and faster paced action. As such, the Poltergeist is the perfect paranormal entity for an impatient Hollywood audience. Its violent, malevolent nature, portrayed alongside a protagonist who might do wrong but is ultimately good-hearted presents the audience with a binary approach to morality. The American film industry is obsessed with good-and-evil narratives, often to the detriment of horror which often requires a sense of moral ambiguity to generate a deeper sense of terror. This is especially true for the supernatural which thrives by evoking the mystical and uncanny, something otherworldly but deeply rooted in people and places, something that Kubrick excels at in The Shining. Poltergeist has many salvageable parts which conform to these ideas; the colonial-guilt-type subtext of disturbing ancient land and the Ray Bradbury-esque strangeness amongst the everyday. However, it's through aesthetic execution that the film becomes wrongfooted and lost to problematic Americanisms, the underlying politics and satire ironically drowned out by the superficial.

Trailer for Poltergeist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ytjaMfoF2M

Paranormal Activity (2007, dir. Oren Peli)

A film that both perfected and ruined the "found footage" genre, Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity was a smash hit on its theatrical release, becoming the most profitable film ever made relative to its minuscule budget. Despite how critics might regard it now, it is in fact a hugely innovative piece of film-making. Succeeding the likes of Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and The Blair Witch Project (1999), it built on these by relocating from the strange and threatening to the safe and familiar, bringing the danger into the home. This itself isn't a new setting for a horror film, but utilising the realism of the home movie camera, it's given a simple twist which results in a piece of authentically chilling entertainment.

It centres on a young couple, Katie and Micah, who live in the suburbs in San Diego. Micah starts recording video footage in the house in an attempt to capture supernatural occurrences after Katie describes an evil presence which has haunted her since childhood. They enlist the help of a psychic, who informs them that Katie is being stalked by a demon feeding off of her negative energy, recommending that they get in contact with a demonologist. Instead the couple try to tackle the issue on their own, spurred on more by Micah's self-confidence than by Katie who on several occasions insists that they give up trying to get rid of it. The film is split into day-time and night-time segments, of which during the latter all the paranormal activity usually occurs. Installing the camera in the corner of their bedroom, the audience are left to endure the eerie tension, waiting for something to happen.

The remainder of the plot is delightfully minimal, never getting bogged down in tedious exposition and always focusing on the relationship between Katie and Micah. Rather than plunging its audience directly into the action, like Poltergeist, the film instead takes its time in establishing a tense, creepy atmosphere. The realism inhabits not just the characters and setting but the very framing of the plot; what we are shown and not shown. The familiarity extends beyond this to even smaller aspects such as the inclusion of a tacky, mass produced ouija board and a garish website that the couple visits to read an account of an exorcism. Furthermore the film is relatively free from the fascistic tendencies that other horrors insufferably rely upon; there's no music to force an atmosphere and no unjust jump scares. These details go a long way in creating a sense of the unheimlich, establishing a world we're totally ready to believe in, especially during those earlier disturbances. When horror films show us ancient artefacts or blatantly fantastical occurrences, we're less inclined to engage with their version of reality because they differ too much from our own. Instances of unaccountable noises heard at night or perhaps irrational feelings of an otherworldly presence are familiar to us all, and Paranormal Activity cleverly exploits this type of fear by never straying too far from reality.

The film has since earned itself a bad name after its own exploitation by Hollywood, spawning five unwanted sequels in the space of six years, as well as leading to an explosion of "found footage" horror films. Cheap to produce and effectively scary (as proven) the sub-genre has dried up very quickly, leaving people looking back on Paranormal Activity with some distaste. Really, it's an idea that only works once. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed watching it, I could never bother sitting through it again. Both it and Poltergeist share this phantasmagoric quality, where we're dazzled with things that happen, but there's little underneath it all. In this sense, the stripped back found footage is a natural successor to expensive special effects of the 80s. Any notion of intellectual depth gets buried beneath the purely visceral thrills, and the audience is pushed to feel but not to think. This is one of the problems of the American ghost story, and why Hollywood often has to resort to the noisy, violent poltergeist rather than the quiet, equivocal spectre.

Trailer for Paranormal Activity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UxLEqd074

Both Poltergeist and Paranormal Activity are about noisy ghosts in suburban homes. In both, the ghosts are malevolent, and both have christian undertones. These elements are so often detrimental to horror, removing any psychological or poetic complexity. Many American ghost films try to establish their own scientific sense of lore, with god-fearing paranormal professors or cross-bearing ghost hunters who talk about "paranormal realms" and have equipment to carry out supernatural experiments. It exhibits a type of American mindset where spirituality corresponds to an individual's quantifiable innate goodness. This is also evident in many other recent American ghost films; The Conjuring (2013), The Last Exorcism (2010) etc. The malevolent spirit is either a demon or a vengeful spirit refusing to move on to the afterlife and, therefore, always portrayed as the villain. In the end, the film turns out to be a spiritual conflict between good and evil, and good often has the upper hand. Films like The Shining break this trend whilst exploring what the American ghost story could be instead. Much like a Western, The Shining has an underlying sense of man against the wilderness, both geographically and psychologically. The haunted Overlook Hotel is a physical manifestation of both Jack Torrence's mental state and American colonialism. The ghosts here are ambiguous syntheses of these two aspects, manifestations of a relationship between mind, place and time. Consequently, the interplay between mind, place and time has much greater poetic traction than the interplay between good and evil.

These elements of history and location are often forgotten about in American supernatural films, with the same old haunted house cropping up again and again. Poltergeist and Paranormal Activity are good enough distractions from this trend, but they fail to do much more than distract. In the next few blog posts, I will compare these to other supernatural films from around the globe, exploring how they differ in their portrayals of the paranormal. Rooted in folklore and religion, ghosts can change vastly in their manifestations from culture to culture, often in ways that completely reshape the narrative. As shown here, there is a definite set of trends in American ghost stories including Christianity, colonial anxieties, and good and evil. The two films I have examined here both diverge from the beaten path of creepy old houses (which I would like to explore at a later date), and are oriented to feel partially relatable by the audience (through family, suburbs etc.). Furthermore both films were produced to be big-screen hits, intended to thrill rather than provoke ideas. Next week I'll be skipping across the pond to look at the British ghost on film, focusing specifically on The Innocents (1961) and Whistle and I'll Come to You (1968). Comments and suggestions for other films to look at would be greatly appreciated!