Writing about hauntings

Alex Epstein, screenwriter and blogger extraordinaire, analyzes his experience watching and re-watching The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist. Even though they both occupy a soft spot in my heart, I couldn't agree more with his take. I saw them both as a child, but there is no doubt that they're a little cheesy now.

Alex writes:

We're writing a haunted house movie, so we watched the AMITYVILLE HORROR and POLTERGEIST. I'd never seen the first, but I remember the second one being molto scary when I saw it in my 20's.

Lordy, how lame they seem now?

Is it the cheesy special effects? The late 70's styles, which seem so off now?

Or is it the really terrible acting and dialog?

For me, what's at the heart of the problem is that nothing is going on except haunting. You take a perfectly nice happy family with no problems -- something that doesn't exist -- and throw it into a perfectly nice happy place, and then we're all waiting for something to happen.

Here's my recipe for a haunted house movie: they're already having problems. They're arguing and not talking to each other enough. So you're interested in them, and something interesting is going on during the spaces between the supernatural incidents. And of course, they don't give up their point of view -- they don't stop arguing about whatever it was. Because people don't. Soldiers will keep arguing about who stole whose dessert while they're waiting for the next barrage -- even if only to keep their minds off being under fire.

I had this exact same point of view while writing Phasma Ex Machina. The supernatural aspect only serves as a Trojan Horse to the emotional heart of the narrative. I'm not interested in painting a false reality. I'm aiming for truth, albeit one with theoretical physics, murder, and people that won't stay dead.

Read the rest of his post here.