Editorials
[It Came From the ‘80s] Corpse-Filled Pools and House Implosions in ‘Poltergeist’
It Came From the ‘80s is a series that pays homage to the monstrous, deadly, and often slimy creatures that made the ‘80s such a fantastic decade in horror.
As far as haunted house horror is concerned, Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist is a bit of a trailblazer. The haunted abode wasn’t some gothic mansion or sprawling fixer-upper, but a brand-new house built in a developing community. A house with no prior residents or history, therefore an unlikely setting for a haunting. Of course, the modern suburban Freeling family eventually discover that the community developers started construction on top of a former cemetery. Except, only the headstones had been removed, and the dead aren’t happy about their new neighbors.
The special effects-heavy horror movie initially earned an R-rating, because this was still two years before the advent of PG-13. Spielberg and Hooper talked the MPAA down to a PG, making Poltergeist quite possibly the scariest PG horror of all. It’s not hard to get why the film would ruffle the MPAA’s feathers; special makeup effects artist Craig Reardon (The Gate, Dick Tracy, Thir13en Ghosts) handled some of the grislier moments including the rotten steak and the face removal. Hooper pulled Reardon into the project after having worked with him on The Funhouse.
One of the most subtle aspects of the movie is the “why” of the haunting. Or rather, why did the haunting start well after the Freeling family had moved in and settled? Especially when their neighbors don’t seem to be dealing with any poltergeist in their own homes. The only real clue lies in the backyard pool. Breaking ground on installing the Freeling pool seems to be the catalyst in their paranormal activity, and it climaxes with Diane Freeling (JoBeth Williams) being stuck in the would-be pool’s muddied pit. The rain and mud leave her struggling to climb out to rescue her children, who are under attack inside when corpses pop up all around her.
For this horrific moment, Reardon ordered 13 biological supplied skeletons from India. Meant for classroom-type study, they came wired together for display and included a metal stand and a vinyl cover. Why real ones? Because they were cheaper than the plastic counterparts and offered variation among the skeletons. From there, Reardon and his team dressed them down, taking them from bleached specimens to gnarly corpses. He drew inspiration from E.C. Horror Comics to create their look.
Poltergeist was a perfect marriage of makeup effects and visual effects. The film’s visual effects earned an Academy Award nomination in 1983, but it lost out to Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. While Hooper enlisted Reardon, Spielberg turned to Industrial Light & Magic and visual effects supervisor Richard Edlund (Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Monster Squad) for the VFX moments that included the flying objects in the children’s room, the esophagus-like visual that engulfed a bedroom, and of course the house implosion at the end.
Making a house implode, as in suck into itself rather than simply explode, proved a challenge that took ILM a while to develop and test. In the end, they created a very detailed miniature model of the Freeling house, rigged it on a funnel-like steel cable rig, set up a high-powered vacuum system to capture any debris not pulled through the funnel, and filmed the implosion on a high-speed camera in one single take. It’s been reported that Spielberg has the remains of the four-foot-wide replica on display in his home!
There are so many reasons Poltergeist has endured as a horror classic. Jerry Goldsmith’s score, the ever-endearing Freeling family, and the unique take on the haunted house are all compelling and worthwhile reasons on their own. On top of it all, Poltergeist is a visual spectacle, a perfect union of gruesome special makeup effects and otherworldly, award-nominated visual effects that help this seminal film withstand the test of time.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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