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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Whiteout (2009)

In an Antarctic research station beset by a killer, one character says of the Aurora Australis, "It's a helluva show," and the line comes right at the point viewers' can unequivocally agree the same cannot be said of this thriller full of performances icier and more remote than its polar setting. 

★☆☆☆☆

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Alien (1979)

Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley became the archetypal kickass heroine after her introduction in this original Alien movie, essentially a pick-them-off-one-at-a-time horror like many American slasher flicks full of teens camping in remote locations with masked evil hunting them down, but Alien transcends its genre with its muted, echoey spaceship campground, its otherworldly Jason always kept at a distance, never seen fully extended, always in shadow and so not just masked but unfathomable, and the movie is rich in other details - robot crew members, extraterrestrial remains, slumber pods - that have been developed into a detailed mythology across four sequels to date (and happily counting!).

★★★★★

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