We're all familiar with those clever movie-related commercials DirecTV runs on television, the ones that take a famous scene from a film like "Aliens" or "Back to the Future" and turn the characters into shills for satellite television. (Okay, they sound less clever when I describe them that way.)
A few weeks ago, DirecTV started airing a new commercial, one that riffs on the 1982 horror classic "Poltergeist." But here's the part that's really creepy: Heather O'Rourke -- the girl who played Carol Anne in the movie and, sadly, died at the age of 12 due to a heart attack brought on by septic shock -- appears in the ad. Watch below and you'll see what I mean.
Even though it's supposed to look like a scene from the 26-year-old movie, the spot subtly implies that O'Rourke is still with us. Which is a long way of saying: This commercial gives me a case of the heebie jeebs. And I'm not the only one. Bloggers and others have been whipping up a frothy brew of Internet outrage over this clip during the past few weeks.
"I think it’s in poor taste," writes this blogger at San Diego City Beat.
"Truly declasse," says slashfilm.
"I just think a dead child should be off limits," adds a commenter at Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog.
Reportedly, O'Rourke's mother, Kathleen, approved the ad. So one could argue that if it's fine with the O'Rourke family, it should be fine with us. And it's a valid point that this is footage from a movie in which O'Rourke played a character, so it lives on in a different realm -- so to speak -- than the actual Heather O'Rourke.
I hear all that. Yet I still can't shake the fact that there is something spooky and altogether ooky about this. Maybe I'm just freaked because "Poltergeist" scared the bodily juices out of me when I was a kid. But the bottom line is that I don't think a deceased star, especially one who died so young, should be resuscitated solely to sell premium and HD channels to the masses.
