Continuity mistake: When Carol Anne is being sucked into the closet vortex she clearly lets go of the white wicker headboard of her bed. In the next shot, the child (actually a dummy or a stunt double) is seen sailing into the closet, grasping a sizeable section of the now broken headboard.
Poltergeist (1982)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: Tobe Hooper
Starring: Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Oliver Robins, Beatrice Straight, Dominique Dunne
On their final night in the house after saving Carol-Anne from "the other side" The ghosts attack the Freeling family once more. Coffins start to pop up out of the ground. The father comes home from work to see the pandemonium. He finds out that his boss had only moved the headstones of the graveyard and not the bodies and that's why the house is haunted. The mother and children escape the house and it implodes in on it's self. The Freeling family go to stay in a motel, making sure to push the TV outside.
Hazax of Rodmore
More mistakes in Poltergeist
Carol Anne Freeling: They're here.
Trivia: While filming the toy clown attacking Robbie, the clown's arms were wrapped tightly around Oliver's neck. He immediately said he couldn't breathe but Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper both thought that he was ad-libbing. When Spielberg saw Oliver's face turning purple, he realised that he really was being asphyxiated and ran over to remove the arms from his neck.
Question: Why was only the Freelings' house sucked into the vortex? Since it was discovered that the developer only moved the headstones but left the bodies, shouldn't other houses that were also built over the cemetery have also been dragged in?
Answer: A poltergeist haunts a person rather than a place. Though building the neighborhood over their graves is what initially disturbed the ghosts, they are fixated on Carol Anne.
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Answer: It seems that the majority of the activity was focusing in on the Freeling house exclusively. It's not fully explained why they were the only house affected, but there are a number of possibilities. Possibly because it's where the highest concentration of spirits were at unrest. Possibly because it could be inferred that the Freelings moved in first given Steven was involved with the company that built the community, and thus they became the first targets. And possibly because they were trying to get to Carol-Anne since she was an easy target.
Also, it is mentioned in the movie that Carol Anne was actually born in the house. That likely caused everything to focus on her.
It was not meant that Carol Anne was literally born inside the house, just while the family was living there. It was just a casual colloquial expression Steven's boss made.
raywest ★