Rating of
3.5/4
The Mundane Has Never Been This Terrifying
Chris Kavan - wrote on 10/29/09
Minimalism is completely lost on Hollywood these days. Between the next huge in-your-face blockbuster or amped-up gorefest, sometimes something slips by, often overlooked or unnoticed. Lucky for us, Paranormal Activity had a great plan: roll out slowly, word-of-mouth interest and terrific audience reaction.
So it is that a $15,000 movie is probably going to end up north of $100 million after its run - and it deserves every penny. With just two main actors, a camera and some nifty camera tricks you have the perfect Halloween movies that put such dreck as Saw and Stepfather to shame. It's one of those great movies that gnaws at you and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up - it's not so much scary as unsettling.
The best thing about Paranormal Activity is the fact that, for the most part, it seems like it could happen. Yes, some of the decisions made are totally inane, and the people a little too calm considering the situation, but in the end it's all plausible. Yes, you can't help comparing this to The Blair Witch Project. But I think this will hold up much better over time. The characters are better, the tension is higher and the setting, at least for me, is much more terrifying. You have to actively go out camping, but a suburban home can be anywhere.
There's no music - which in this case helped things. This is supposed to be a quiet film, with brief periods of horror. Never has something as a door closing, footsteps or whispers been so effective. There are a few times I was left with a WTF feeling - I know I wouldn't be wandering around my house with camera if I heard strange noises and the whole Ouija board thing was almost too much. The end was also a little strange compared to the rest of the film. I kind of expected it to end the way it did, but maybe not quite as sudden.
In the end, Paranormal Activity sticks with you because the scares aren't in the form of some mythical undying killer or a deadly virus or an evil kid - no, Paranormal Activity presents a regular, mundane world - a real world situation an introduces something that disrupts this normal life. In the end, it's only as scary as you imagine and for someone with a good imagination - it can be the scariest of all.
All I know is, the valuable lesson I learned is that if a malevolent demon or spirit or whatever happens to be hanging around, being an isolationist is the wrong thing to do. Me? I think I'd hold a party and kiss those bad vibrations goodbye. Nothing makes a demon go away faster than inviting a bunch of friends over to play Rock Band and watch The Big Lebowski.
