5) Poltergeist (1982)
It’s rare to find an example of horror with as much heart as Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist, a feature some believe was actually directed by Steven Spielberg. Interestingly, the King of Entertainment had a clause in his contract for E.T. the Extra Terrestrial which stopped him from directing another movie while shooting his short-legged alien flick. Thus, Spielberg took on a role as a producer for Poltergeist, though apparently spent much of his time on-set in more of a directorial capacity.
Still, one truth we know for certain is that the film was an incredibly important movie for the genre, not only for picking up Academy Award nominations (it lost out to Spielberg’s own loveable alien blockbuster movie that year), but in how it managed to get an entirely new audience into the horror genre (it’s one of the only PG rated horror flicks that have gone on to become a critical and commercial success).
Focusing on a family’s home haunted by a myriad of resentful phantasms and ghastly apparitions, Poltergeist may not be the scariest movie on this list, but it’s, arguably, one of the most culturally significant.
