A suburban family seeks the help of paranormal investigators after their youngest daughter is kidnapped by malevolent spirits inside their own home. Poltergeist, written and produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), is an emotional and visceral thrill ride that I have cherished since childhood. The story’s family, the Frelings, are quirky but entirely believable. You get invested in them before the supernatural shit hits the fan, and this gives weight to all the scares and spectacle that follows.
Blade Runner tackles one of science fiction’s biggest questions:Â what makes us human? The story by Philip K. Dick is a sci-fi allegory for soldiers returning home with post-traumatic stress, wrapped in the veneer of a neo-noir detective story — all in all, a beguiling blend of genres and content. Harrison Ford plays the detective, Dekkard, a world-weary loner hired to hunt androids (here called replicants) in need of ‘retirement’. The notion is that the replicants were created for war, and once they’re done fighting, they can’t possibly reintegrate back into society. But where real-life soldiers risk losing part of their humanity through warfare, the replicants allege to have discovered theirs — if not through battle, through the things they’ve seen and experienced across the universe.
