Psycho

One of the things that I like most about the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is the last shot – the camera slowly spinning and pulling away from Marion Crane's open, lifeless eye. It's extremely unsettling. It's a great way to cap that sequence off.

When characters die in movies, they often close their eyes or we don't see their eyes. Or, someone will do the decent and respectable thing by closing their eyes rather quickly. Here, Hitchcock lingers on her eye, as it stares off into nothing, seeing nothing. Her eye doesn't move or twitch. He makes us actually, kind of, confront death. It's so uncomfortable sitting there, being forced to look at this blank eye. It doesn't feel as though it's a movie death, as it would if she had closed her eyes or if her eyes remained hidden from, and unacknowledged by, the camera. It adds a sense and feeling of realism to the scene.

It also adds to the shock of it. She doesn't get the time to breathe her last few breaths and, sort of, peacefully go. No, she's attacked, has her last few moments and just collapses – splat – onto the floor. It's violent and sudden and brutal.

I don't think the scene would work as well without this shot. It's creepy and unsettling and uncomfortable.

Poltergeist

There are, obviously, a lot of things to like about the film Poltergeist because it is a great, classic movie. But there is one thing that I especially like about it – there are no experts in it. There's no one who has all the answers. It's a bit of a trope that there's always some character around who has read up, and knows all about, all sorts of paranormal and supernatural phenomenon and can say 'this is what's going on, this is what we need to do.' Here, all of the characters are clearly in over their heads.

The most Dr. Lesh and her crew have seen before is a toy move a few feet over several hours – what they're greeted with is a room with several objects flying around it. The Freeling family has more experience than the paranormal investigators at that point, having seen furniture move in seconds. The investigators haven't seen anything like this - after seeing the room with things spinning and flying around they still look for tricks when they see a coffee pot move across the table, this is their job but they can't believe what they're seeing. All the investigators can really do from there is collect data and evidence of the paranormal activities going on. They won't know what to do about any of it though.

Tangina, the medium, takes it in stride and acts as though she knows what she's doing, but she doesn't – she's faking it. When Diane wants to go into the portal in the closet, Tangina tells her “You've never done this before,” to which Diane responds “Neither have you.” Tangina gets a look on her face as though she's thinking 'oh crap, that's right' then tells Diane to do it. She's prepared to tell the family what they want to hear and say a few words to the house, but when it comes to actually confronting a poltergeist? She's real quick to pass that off to someone else. Then when Diane reappears with Carol Anne, Tangina straightens her hair a bit, looks into the video camera Dr. Lesh's crew has, and declares, very self-satisfied, “this house is clean.” But we soon see that the house is not clean. So she doesn't know! She doesn't know what she's talking about – she just sees a chance at some glory, this will make her look good.

So what's my point? Well, it's much more frightening and unsettling when no one has the ready answers. This is added to the film being set in an average 1980s suburb development – there's probably houses and developments that resemble it in most areas. It's not some spooky looking house or area – it's brand-new, nice houses; nothing should go wrong or be out of the ordinary there. But things go very wrong and no one knows how to deal with it. In the end they don't defeat the poltergeist, they don't triumph over it – they escape, they run away from it. If it can happen there, to this average looking family, it can happen anywhere, to anyone – and there may be no one who knows what to do or has answers and the only thing you may be able to do is run. How frightening is that?