The Internet has been abuzz with viral marketing for “Paranormal Activity.” People rush to the movie’s site to “Demand It!” be shown in their city, and tweets swirl about how it’s so scary you’ll never be able to sleep soundly again.
Trailers warn “Don’t see it alone,” but I’m warning you not to see it at all.
“Paranormal Activity” is an independent film that was first shown at the “Screamfest Film Festival” back in 2007.
The movie met with great reviews and began growing exponentially in popularity until today.
It’s now being shown in select cities around the country. Tampa happens to be one of those cities.
The movie is shown through the lens of Micah’s camera, boyfriend of the haunted protagonist, Katie.
Think “Cloverfield” with ghosts.
A paranormal figure has followed Katie since childhood and recently settled at their home in California. Micah, being a skeptic, decides it would be fun to catch “proof” of the entity’s existence on tape.
The two experience increasingly spooky activity during the night, reviewing it on their computer the next morning.
“Paranormal Activity” is about an hour and a half of doors opening, lights flickering, and blankets moving. Big whoop.
Ironically, for a movie I was encouraged to not see alone, I was glad to be accompanied by a friend, not to hold my hand, but to distract me from this bore-fest.
There was such potential, too.
Every night the audience returns to the same dark bedroom as Micah attempts to film the supernatural being.
A clock in the lower right corner speeds forward until something “scary” is about to happen. When it’s back to real time, you know things are going to get real—kinda.
Every time this happened I waited to pee myself out of terror, but not even a drop trickled.
Returning to the dark bedroom could have been an amazing film-making tool, placing the audience in a position of true horror.
The filmmakers were conditioning their audience to expect to be frightened in the dark bedroom, but never delivered. It’s an unfortunate case of too much suspense with too little follow-up.
The only redeeming quality of the movie is Micah’s humor. Whether it’s intentional or not, Micah’s a pretty funny guy, shooting sarcastic comebacks at his terrified girlfriend consistently throughout.
It’s too bad this is not enough to save the movie.
Other than the occasional quip from Micah, the characters were uninteresting and hard to care about.
The entity itself was laughable. I’m just saying, if I was an all-powerful demon haunting a defenseless girl, I’d do a whole lot more than creek open doors and flicker lights for weeks on end.
“Paranormal Activity” was the first movie I’ve ever seriously wanted my money back after seeing.
It only proved to me that not only Hollywood pumps out crap but independent labels, too.
For a movie that promised nights of impossible sleep, I only experienced one and a half hours of nightmare in the theater.
I give “Paranormal Activity” a 1/5.
To contact Shannon, email him at sgrippando@gmail.com.
borefest! theres a reason hollywood keeps pumping out the same thing: people pay to see it and like it. this is too much like that trendy “cloverfield, blairwitch” bull that movie elitists love to love. “ew u like hollywood movies. how droll. i like indie bc im cool like that.”
Maybe we saw two different films or something, but I found the movie to be quite good. It was a breath of fresh air from hollywood steroid induced films that try to condition circumstances into unbelievable messes. There isn’t supposed to be a huge character build up. It’s set up as mockumentary and they started abruptly filming their normal lives, and in that sense it was really real. It explored that fear of what happens when running outside, instead of running up the stairs like a bimbo, is impossible, when it gets to the point that it doesn’t matter where the character sleeps. Maybe you are too conditioned to hollywood horror films and thus, don’t know how to react when your normal bullshit radar doesn’t go off. hm.