I think the idea of the haunted house is one of the strongest places to set a ghost story. Home, and by extension the house you live at is often seen as a private safe haven. It’s seen as a place that not only protects you from the danger of nature, but can also act as an escape from the dangers prevalent in society. Because of this the idea of your house being haunted is very effective in being unnerving, and makes a good setup for horror stories. When the danger is coming from your own home, where do you run too? Often you can’t, so you’re left with no option but to confront the danger. I think both of these movies have good
elements of the haunted house format
I Really enjoyed Poltergeist. I think it really captured the fear of your home becoming unsafe. I think it also uses the haunted in an interesting way to make commentary on TV. I think the film was commenting on the dangers of tv or media in general, and how we don’t know who's on the other side or what their motives in speaking to us are. We see this diluted in scenes like when the mom turns the tv off static and on to a war show without realizing what she's showing to her kid.
I might be overthinking thinking this, but a part of the movie that plays into this idea well is when the neighbor turns the tv to Mister Rogers. Fred Rogers was someone who always advocated for the importance and influence tv can have on kids. He was even adopted to work in television by the church after he was ordained. He’s show was always praised for feeling like you were talked to and not talked at. Having shown Mr. Rogers, a person who used tv for good, at the beginning of the movie makes a good contrast to the ghost, who used the tv for evil.
To be frank, I wasn’t a big fan of paranormal activity. I think it had a very strong premium, but I think the execution falls a little flat. The idea of someone recording home videos of their haunting could lend itself really well for horror. The low budget handheld style gives a sense of realism to the film, and it gives us a chance to have some more personal down to earth moments with our characters. This format also gives the perfect setup for having mundane activists being infiltrated by horror, giving us good surprise scares. I don’t think the movie ever uses these elements to its full advantage.
The movie does a good job building tension and unease, but it never goes anywhere with it. It never esculatets to new levels of terror. An analogy to explain this is It's like watching a candle burn near a loss curtain. There's that tension that the curtain could catch flame and start a house fire, and we sit on the edge of our seat waiting for it to happen . But the issue is only so dire, and eventually our interest is going to wane. I feel that the problem with Paranormal activity. We have all of these little scares, and it gets slightly more intense as the movie goes on, but the curtain doesn't catch fire like the last mins of the movie, and even then the payoff is only a mild jump scare.