I often get asked why I choose to write horror? There is often a derogatory implication in the question. Whether this is in the person asking the question or just the insecurity of a writer working in such an oft reviled genre I don't know.
The answer I usually give is that I love horror and always have. However, I have recently been thinking upon this answer, and though it is certainly true that I do love the genre to this day, I can't have always loved horror. Once upon a time I loved 'Bambi' and 'Pinocchio' (if I'm honest I still love them). I have been trying to figure out at what point I fell in love with horror.
The first film a remember seeing at the cinema was 'Ghostbusters', and though this film contains he supernatural it is far from horror. Maybe seeing that did in someway influence my life long passion for the darker stories of the world. But I think there is a film that is far more directly responsible.
Anyone who saw this film for the first time between the ages of five and ten will likely hold the film in such high regard, as I myself do, that they actually feel a real threat to their precious childhood memories from the forthcoming remake. Whenever I think about the film due to be released next year, I want to be positive, and open minded, but all I can feel is the cold dread of disappointment.
There will only ever be one 'Poltergeist'. The film has such a unique feel, and charm that I think would be impossible to replicate. Poltergeist exists in a precarious position of being halfway between a family film and a horror film. It is a fine line that is straddles with such deft brilliance, that it is simultaneously a scary and heart warming film.
I remember the first time I watched the film. I was a little nervous, this was after all a horror film, and at seven years old this was a new experience for me. I was still scared of ghosts, and monsters under the bed. The nervousness was mixed with the excitement of anticipation though, and these two things together created a feeling that was like electricity shooting through my spine. It is the feeling that I long for every time I sit down to watch a horror film, but I rarely get it anymore.
'Poltergeist' was pitch perfect, it really is the ideal introduction to horror. The film is a testament to the talents of its producer/ writer Steven Spielberg, and its director Tobe Hooper. There is something magical about the film that I still feel when I watch it now.
The film industry, hell bent on re telling every story, will argue of course that the film has dated badly, and thus is in need of remaking for a modern audience. While the film is certainly a product of its time, there are a lot of references to iconic things from the early 80s, is this really a problem though?
People of a certain age, I include myself in this, still love the original because it reminds us of a very specific time in our childhoods. Every time I watch the film and see all of the Star Wars toys and memorabilia in the kids bedroom, I am transported to my own childhood bedroom, which looked very similar, apart from the cupboard that suck children into the parallel universe of the dead of course.
As a child, and now, I loved watching the early Bond films of Sean Connery, despite the fact that these films had dated badly by the early eighties. Yet I could enjoy these films, as I'm sure many people reading this did. If we were capable of enjoying films made over a decade before we were born, then surely modern audiences can enjoy the original Poltergeist now.
I often think that the film industry has got into a terrible habit of underestimating it's audiences. Therefore the same stories have to be told every few years just so new audiences can relate to it. This is of course is nonsense.
The central story of a family coming together to fight a supernatural evil in their home is universal. Regardless of when the tale is set or told the audience can relate to it. It has been used recently in the films 'Insidious' and 'The Conjuring', even my own debut novel, 'Beneath', deals with this same universal premise.
I really hope that the 'Poltergeist' remake will do justice to the special place the original holds in my heart, and the heart of countless other, but I fear it will not, and that it will sully the good name of that film. I think my main fear is that it would be to easy to shift the tone a little too far either way, this would make the film either, too family orientated with not enough scares, or the other way and push it too far into the realm of horror. Either of these would be disastrous in my opinion.
Perhaps the film makers will prove me wrong, but as much as I hope they will, I don't think that is going to happen. Do you?
