The argument over who directed Poltergeist - the credited Tobe Hooper or producer and co-writer Steven Spielberg -  weirdly reflects the tone of the 1982 hit, which starred Craig T. Nelson as a father who moves his family into a California suburb built on a Native American burial ground. The film melds some genuinely strange and galvanizing images of the home rebelling against its new owners with a healthy dose of the thoughtful family dynamics that made E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind so distinct. In a way, one could see Hooper as the malevolent, unbound spirit trying to burst through the veneer of Spielberg's impeccably designed environs and relatively mild strain of sentimental hokum.

the-changeling
Image via Associated Film

Both Hooper, the ingenious wild man behind The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Spielberg are obsessives when it comes to the realms of the supernatural onscreen, clearly versed in creature features, ghost stories, and killer thrillers of all makes and models. Once decoded, major works of early horror can be gleaned in Poltergeist's DNA, from Robert Wise' gorgeous The Haunting to The Innocents to silent masterworks like The Fall of the House of Usher (the French version), The Cat and the Canary, and The Haunted Castle. Haunted house movies are a sub-genre that has weirdly struggled to create new, ambitious variations but that's not to say that there haven't been a handful of particularly eerie and visually striking films set in haunted homes and hotels made between the early 1980s and the upcoming Poltergeist reboot. So, in honor of Sam Rockwell running away from a living clown puppet, I decided to take a look at 5 haunted house movies that haven't received their total due in the eyes of the masses...yet.

Livid

Ever since Black Swan, it's been hard to think of ballerinas as graceful, hard-working athletes and not demonic bird-people, but that pales in comparison to the dancers and visceral scares of Livid, one of the gems of France's recent string of utterly mad, visually unsettling, and politically potent horror films. This would include the absolutely terrifying Martyrs and 2007's Inside, arguably the best work of the horror genre that the aughts unleashed, the latter of which was directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, the duo behind Livid and, at one point, the long-gestating Hellraiser reboot. And though both Livid and Inside take place almost entirely in homes stricken by a murderous entity, Livid is an entirely different beast than Inside, not nearly as virtuosic in its aesthetics, framing, or sense of movement but nearly as affective in its detailing of unresolved personal histories and tragedies as monstrous, reoccurring events that grow angrier and more violent as the years wear on.

The Changeling

If The Changeling doesn't seem as immediately unsettling as something like, say, (the hugely underrated) Sinister, it's because it belongs to a more classical strain of filmmaking, more patient and steady in its visual storytelling but less daring in premise and lacking in symbolism. It's also anchored by a stirring, perfectly controlled performance by George C. Scott, who plays a musician and professor living in a home haunted by the ghost of a young child. This is to say that scaring people isn't as important in The Changeling as making a good movie, something director Peter Medak often insisted on throughout his career. Still, the film is stocked with wildly unhinged images: the slowly creeping wheelchair, the burning staircase, and some wonderfully tense tracking shots along the corridors of the great mansion in which its set. In many ways, this is the rightful heir to The Haunting, certainly far more than Jan de Bant's risible and wholly obnoxious remake of Wise's film.

The Innkeepers

Where were you when you first saw House of the Devil? I saw it at a double feature with a good friend, the latter half following John Hillcoat's not-too-shabby adaptation of The Road. Ti West's mastery of style, tone, and atmosphere were vividly clear from moment one, even through the ever-so-slightly gimmicky haze of the late-70s period and grainy imagery. The Innkeepers, about a haunted hotel investigated by two staff members, who also happen to be amateur ghost hunters, broadened his ambitions as a visual storyteller and tightened up his style, allowing his long takes and extended tracking shots to grow increasingly fluid and edited with a rhythmic sense of crawling movement. The film is also one of the most humanistic horror films to see release over the last two decades, fascinated by the politics and quotidian exchanges of small-town American life, complete with Lena Dunham cameo. It's this film that helps explain West's quiet but quite memorable performance in Joe Swanberg's excellent Drinking Buddies, another film specifically interested in the working life of independent businesses.

The Pact

These days, low-budget horror tends to put its money into effects, and put very little thought into the filmmaking itself. The Pact would be a rare exception to that rule, a deceptively stylized, tightly wound haunter involving two sisters who have supernatural experiences in the wake of their mother's death. Director Nicholas McCarthy has a real ear for silence, and The Pact hits sudden, graceful scares that are largely quiet, not unlike The Strangers. And like that film, McCarthy weaves in a pretty fascinating domestic melodrama into his ghost story, one focused on how two very different siblings approach memories of a not-so-great childhood. Stephanie Draper herself Caity Lotz anchors the film with a subtly thoughtful performance that gives the film a steady pulse of life amongst quite a lot of death.

Ju-On: The Grudge

Horror is at its best when there's an element of the inexplicable, even when the premise might at first seem rigid and reasonable. J-Horror, as a sub-genre, isn't exactly lacking in this arena, but Ju-On is an especial slice of energetic, unnerving nonsense, set in the home where a brutal murder has occurred and a small boy ghost, who meows like a cat, haunts. Unlike Ringu, which is even more frightening than Gore Verbinski's impressive remake, Ju-On allows its sense of bewilderment to far surpass its nevertheless palpable narrative tension, and the result is an uncommon, disturbing enigma that plays freely with time and dream states. And unlike The Ring, the American version of Ju-On, The Grudge, is annoyingly over-expositional and bogged down in an excess of story, whereas the original has little agenda beyond throwing the viewer into troubling state of mind.