With apparent massive worldwide demand and acclaim, I was a touch surprised to realize that until the night I went to see it, I had never heard of Paranormal Activity. However, the friends who bodily dragged my roommate and I off to watch it with them reassured me that it was really popular and quite good, as well as so scary that I wouldn’t sleep for days. As you can imagine, this got me excited for the movie to begin.
Basically, PA tells the story of a couple living in San Diego named Mika and Katie. Seemingly normal, their lives are shaken by a demonic presence in their house that has been following Katie around since she was eight years old. The demon does all the things you would expect, from moving objects, closing doors, making noises, and breathing on Katie. Over the course of twenty five-ish nights, the couple seeks to survive while the demon becomes increasingly more malevolent.
The movie is told through a Cloverfield-esque style, where one camera held by one of the characters or set up on a tripod records all the action. Also, PA is divided up into two basic scene types: daytime and night-time. Essentially, during the day Mika and Katie freak out and examine the footage they took of the night before, and during the night they sleep as the demon haunts, which inevitably causes much screaming and “What the FUCK!”-ing. This division of the days causes the film to have a really weird pace. One moment you’ll be watching cool paranormal stuff go down while the couple remains oblivious, and the next they’re eating breakfast and chatting about how scared they are. It works fine for the first couple of days, but by the end I was just irritated.
So, yeah, the daytime sections suck. But it’s at night where the really shit goes down, right? Wrong. For the nights what essentially happens is Mika sets the camera on a tripod and record the room at night. So, any action that takes place is about 20 feet (or looks like it) away from the camera, which I thought caused the action to be disjointed from the audience. A good horror movie should be up close and personal, but these scenes only remove you from the action.
And this is what causes my biggest beef with the movie: it’s not scary. Maybe it’s just because I’m a massive cynic, but the most I got was unnerved. Sure, for the first couple days it’s creepy, but when the big action started happening, I got bored with the distance from the action and how artificial it felt due to the camera’s placement. Also, in order to actually hit the horror parts with only one camera, the tape needs to be fast forwarded and watching people roll in bed for over for a minute and a half is not scary. And, once it hits the scares, the movie sets up a nice, eerie tone which warned you exactly when it was going to happen. So, even if the events were creepy, they were never unexpected. Furthermore, when they do hit the “big scares” (about an hour in), it’s just a bunch of horror movie clichés tossed together in a hope that is will freak people out.
But, it’s not all bad. The movie does have some cool effects and set pieces, and the plot is not terrible, just unsatisfying. The actors do what they can, but it’s not a super script either. Katie is a terrified cry baby (as you would be if you were haunted) and Mika is an unsupportive dickhead who calls out the demon (which is never a good character to have holding the camera, because he cracks jokes, which lightens the tone. BAD HORROR).
For all its shittiness, I never wanted to stop watching PA. It has some really incredible effects, and if you’re a horror movie buff you might find some thrills. However, I found myself bored and unimpressed. Skip it.
2/5