Poltergeist III (1988)

The previous year, in Jaws: The Revenge, Spielberg's co-opted shark tracked a family from Amity, New England, to The Bahamas, so your scepticism about Spielberg's co-opted poltergeist, here, following Carol Anne Freeling - the 12-year-old who looks ninety - to a Chicago skyscraper in this threequel is summarily dismissed: it's just what bastardised Spielberg villains do, alright? - but once ensconced in this Windy City state-of-the-art megastructure, the 'geist wreaks havoc in only the most bewildering ways: Tangina, for one, finds it all so urgent she won't even finish her cup of tea before sweeping in, hair and make-up electrified from her last-minute jet-set across America - she's like some psychic rockstar version of Pat Benatar - and she fingers a necklace and assures everyone the repetitive ice and mirror motifs of the SFX make wonderful sense to anyone versed in the psychic sciences - you need to read more, is the inference - yet through the mess we do learn that evil can't overcome familial love (even when one family member spends a large part of the movie wishing another stuck forever in a hell portal, good riddance); we learn that elevator emergency buttons are not just for fire but also for instances of demonic elevator possession; and we learn that Lara Flynn Boyle existed before The Practice.

★★☆☆☆

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Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

The sequel to Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist of 1982 is the 1986 release, Brian Gibson's Poltergeist II, a movie variously and bewilderingly about car-whispering, teenage smile correction, cult worship, family togetherness, curses, burial chambers, possessed toys, parasitic infection, domestic abuse, alcohol abuse, ghosts, trauma, paranormal investigation, shamanism, Native American steam bath rituals, and evil, and it doesn't make even one word of sense but has some neat effects a la the original.

★★☆☆☆

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Poltergeist (1982)

The Conjuring franchise and all its spin-offs owe everything to this Steven Spielberg-written and -produced supernatural horror of the 80s which starts quirkily with a family enjoying the supernatural oddities it experiences at home but then has family members growing more and more screamy as whatever it is that is haunting them grows malevolent and sucks the daughter into a Mike TV limbo world - putting up with the shrillness of everyone yelling is worth it for the Spielberg set piece serving as the horror-lite movie's climax.

★★★☆☆

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