This film is not without merits - but it certainly is no classic. It's aged badly, the characterisation is poor, and there are at least a dozen things about it that really grate, e.g.; the fact that the whole film is an excuse to use special effects; the fact that everyone blindly accepts the existence of ghosts and attributes any strange happenings to them without considering any other explanation; the cheesy horror clichés; the annoyingly sickly suburban family; the odd moral of the tale (treat those corpses with respect or else!); the American-dream-gone-wrong theme which doesn't quite work (given the fact that this is a 10 on the daft scale); and, last but not least, the fact that one of the paranormal investigators is scared half to death by the crawling meat scene; and yet ten minutes ago, he was happily documenting dozens of levitating objects flying around a bedroom.<br /><br />That said, the special effects are quite good for the time, and the acting does it's best with such a daft story. At this point, you may be thinking; "this guy just doesn't like the genre". Not true; but in my opinion, effective, truly scary horror is created by the maxim "less is more" - not the more is more approach that Spielberg has employed successfully in other films, and less well here. A disappointment; go watch Ring instead for truly creepy television antics.<br /><br />One last thing; it's appalling this got a PG in the US. One particularly disgusting scene involving peeling flesh is clearly unsuitable for kids, and I can imagine this giving young children nightmares, as hokey as it is. I suggest your kids should be at least twelve before you watch this with them.