Often perceived as a film directed by Steven Spielberg, Poltergeist hits that exciting Halloween atmosphere and present 80's nostalgia perfectly.
It's also worth noting that Spielberg was beginning his work on E.T. at the time, and his contract forbid him from directing, which is why he was unable to direct the film, despite creating the story.
Poltergeist's narrative follows a relatively well-off family living in Orange County, California, which have built a successful real estate empire within the area. The youngest daughter of the family, Annie, becomes fixated on the static television, until one night a hand comes out of the screen and stretches to the wall; an earthquake only the family seemed to experience occurs.
As expected, strange happenings begin to arise the following day, until Annie disappears, only to be found within the television, when tuned to a dead channel. With parapsychologists arriving at the house, they declare that there are more than one ghost; Steven, the father, learns that the location the house is built on was once a cemetery.
Moving on from the plot, Poltergeist contains the eerie thrills you'd expect, and it's themes must have been genuinely terrifying back in the 80's, although the special effects don't particularly hold up well today. That said, it's narrative, performances, and writing are so perfectly tied up together that the special effects only add to the beauty of the film's era: an era of some of cinema's largest successes and classics.