Director: Oren Peli
Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
Running Time: 86 minutes (plus trailers)
"What it probably wants...is Katie"
So more than a month after its release here in Australia, and several months after the film premiered in North America, I finally got the chance to see Paranormal Activity. For those who don’t know, this micro-budget indie horror film, made for approximately fifteen thousand dollars, was purchased by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks and released to a gross of well over one hundred million dollars worldwide, making it one of the most profitable films of all time. Shot first person similar to The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity tells the story of a young couple who believe that their house is haunted, and so they set up a camera to try and capture the demonic forces on video. It is this supposedly real footage that makes up the movie.
I think that the very fact that I saw Paranormal Activity so late has quite an enormous effect on how I experienced the movie. Like the Blair Witch before it, this film has been hailed as a new breed of horror, with critics and horror fans showering with hyperbolic praise, many decreeing it the scariest film of all time. Now anytime I hear movie being compared to The Exorcist I of course dismiss it as being overhyped. Never the less, as a fan of horror movies I was certainly excited to check the film out. But then we all know what happens next. It hits theatres, and we hear from all our cynical friends how terrible it is, how boring the story is, and how it didn’t frighten them once.
And I guess that’s what always happens with a film is marketed solely around positive word of mouth; after all, there are trailers for this movie that have more text declaring it a masterpiece of suspense than they have actual footage from the movie. So when you factor in all this and add to it the fact that I was bored witless by Blair Witch, it’s fair to say that the lights finally dimmed on my belated viewing of Paranormal Activity, my expectations were not particularly high. Which in the end I guess was a good thing, because while I wouldn’t call it anything near the greatest horror movie ever made, I did quite enjoy it.
First off, I want to say that for the first time in probably any movie shot in this style, I actually cared about the characters. The film, aided by the first person camera work, gives us an intimate and believable look at Katie and Micah’s life and relationship, and before long I felt a real connection to these people. Because of this, when the spooky stuff starts going down I was actually rooting for them (as opposed to say in Cloverfield where I didn’t give a crap who lived and who died). While this movie is purportedly about the “paranormal activity”, the entire film hinges on us caring about these two people, and I thought the dialogue and acting from these two non-actors, whose characters are named after them, was very strong. At the very least, you will believe this relationship.
But the sixty four thousand dollar question (or should I say the one hundred million dollar question) is: “is the movie scary?”
No.
Well, sort of.
I personally wasn’t frightened by this film even for a moment, but I could certainly appreciate why one would be. I think the key to Paranormal Activity is that you have to let yourself be scared. Most of the horror aspects are shown from one angle; the night version shot in the bedroom, giving us a clear view of the door, hallway, and Katie and Micah asleep in their beds. Now there are some moments of genuine intensity to be seen here and if you’re really engrossed in the film then I think they could be genuinely terrifying. But if you’re not paying complete attention, if you let your mind wander, if you talk to the person next to you, it’s just not going to work.
However unlike some people I’ve spoken to, I definitely wasn’t ever bored; like I said, the characters are fairly interesting, as are a lot of the ideas. The movie does a pretty good job of building a mythology, and the gradual buildup of paranormal happenings definitely entertained me, even if it didn’t frighten. One thing that doesn’t really work in the movies favor is that it keeps moving you in and out of the nighttime scenes. I expected that all or most of the film was going to be set during a single night; instead it’s more than twenty. Now is probably a good thing in terms of character development, but it does pull you out of the moment and doesn’t really help keep the movie scary.
So that’s it I guess. I didn’t love it, but I certainly didn’t hate it. Potentially this movie could easily be frightening; maybe you have to see it by yourself, or you just have to be in the right mood…who knows? One thing I will say is that given the home documentary feel, it will probably be just as if not more effective on a small screen in a dark room. I am also very glad that such a small movie can make so much money; it’s a very promising sign for independent cinema. I would definitely recommend renting Paranormal Activity if you have the chance…hopefully you’ll be one of the ones for whom it actually works.
Paranormal Activity is coming to the end of it's theatrical run in Australia, and will be available on DVD at some point in 2010; it is currently available on DVD in North America
Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
Running Time: 86 minutes (plus trailers)
"What it probably wants...is Katie"
So more than a month after its release here in Australia, and several months after the film premiered in North America, I finally got the chance to see Paranormal Activity. For those who don’t know, this micro-budget indie horror film, made for approximately fifteen thousand dollars, was purchased by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks and released to a gross of well over one hundred million dollars worldwide, making it one of the most profitable films of all time. Shot first person similar to The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity tells the story of a young couple who believe that their house is haunted, and so they set up a camera to try and capture the demonic forces on video. It is this supposedly real footage that makes up the movie.I think that the very fact that I saw Paranormal Activity so late has quite an enormous effect on how I experienced the movie. Like the Blair Witch before it, this film has been hailed as a new breed of horror, with critics and horror fans showering with hyperbolic praise, many decreeing it the scariest film of all time. Now anytime I hear movie being compared to The Exorcist I of course dismiss it as being overhyped. Never the less, as a fan of horror movies I was certainly excited to check the film out. But then we all know what happens next. It hits theatres, and we hear from all our cynical friends how terrible it is, how boring the story is, and how it didn’t frighten them once.
And I guess that’s what always happens with a film is marketed solely around positive word of mouth; after all, there are trailers for this movie that have more text declaring it a masterpiece of suspense than they have actual footage from the movie. So when you factor in all this and add to it the fact that I was bored witless by Blair Witch, it’s fair to say that the lights finally dimmed on my belated viewing of Paranormal Activity, my expectations were not particularly high. Which in the end I guess was a good thing, because while I wouldn’t call it anything near the greatest horror movie ever made, I did quite enjoy it.
First off, I want to say that for the first time in probably any movie shot in this style, I actually cared about the characters. The film, aided by the first person camera work, gives us an intimate and believable look at Katie and Micah’s life and relationship, and before long I felt a real connection to these people. Because of this, when the spooky stuff starts going down I was actually rooting for them (as opposed to say in Cloverfield where I didn’t give a crap who lived and who died). While this movie is purportedly about the “paranormal activity”, the entire film hinges on us caring about these two people, and I thought the dialogue and acting from these two non-actors, whose characters are named after them, was very strong. At the very least, you will believe this relationship.But the sixty four thousand dollar question (or should I say the one hundred million dollar question) is: “is the movie scary?”
No.
Well, sort of.
I personally wasn’t frightened by this film even for a moment, but I could certainly appreciate why one would be. I think the key to Paranormal Activity is that you have to let yourself be scared. Most of the horror aspects are shown from one angle; the night version shot in the bedroom, giving us a clear view of the door, hallway, and Katie and Micah asleep in their beds. Now there are some moments of genuine intensity to be seen here and if you’re really engrossed in the film then I think they could be genuinely terrifying. But if you’re not paying complete attention, if you let your mind wander, if you talk to the person next to you, it’s just not going to work.
However unlike some people I’ve spoken to, I definitely wasn’t ever bored; like I said, the characters are fairly interesting, as are a lot of the ideas. The movie does a pretty good job of building a mythology, and the gradual buildup of paranormal happenings definitely entertained me, even if it didn’t frighten. One thing that doesn’t really work in the movies favor is that it keeps moving you in and out of the nighttime scenes. I expected that all or most of the film was going to be set during a single night; instead it’s more than twenty. Now is probably a good thing in terms of character development, but it does pull you out of the moment and doesn’t really help keep the movie scary.
So that’s it I guess. I didn’t love it, but I certainly didn’t hate it. Potentially this movie could easily be frightening; maybe you have to see it by yourself, or you just have to be in the right mood…who knows? One thing I will say is that given the home documentary feel, it will probably be just as if not more effective on a small screen in a dark room. I am also very glad that such a small movie can make so much money; it’s a very promising sign for independent cinema. I would definitely recommend renting Paranormal Activity if you have the chance…hopefully you’ll be one of the ones for whom it actually works.
Paranormal Activity is coming to the end of it's theatrical run in Australia, and will be available on DVD at some point in 2010; it is currently available on DVD in North America
