Secondhand Reviews: "Paranormal Activity"

Well, we have here a very low-budget (under $100,000) movie shot not merely in documentary style but from the actual point of view as if the viewer were observing the action through the camera filming it. It's a supernatural ghost story, with no actual gore or ghosts or other supernatural creatures actually appearing on screen, and the horror is nearly all left to your imagination. It features characters whose names are the same as the actors who play them and a beginning that makes it appear that the fiction you're about to watch is the real thing, actual documentary footage. By now this probably sounds like a review of "The Blair Witch Project", but not quite. It's actually a review of a movie that's a good deal scarier.

"Paranormal Activity" is the story of Micah and Katie, a young couple who have just recently bought a new home shortly before the film opens. Katie has had a series of strange, frightening incidents happen to her over the past few years that has led her to the conclusion that some strange, demonic entity is after her, and those incidents continue and increase in their new home. To find out just exactly what is going on, the two of them set up a video camera to record exactly what's happening at all hours, including as they sleep... and hopefully get some solid evidence about what's causing all the weirdness. They get much, much more than they bargain for.

It's mind-boggling to me to think that this film was made for barely $15,000. It's not filled with special effects or anything, granted, but it does still give many higher-budgeted movies a run for their money, and in particular the sound effects... the "voices" of the demons you never actually see... are downright terrifying. And while I don't know that I've ever thought before about what demons might sound like, now I know... they sound exactly like they do in this movie. And while I've seen other movies (meaning other than just "Blair Witch") that purport to be documentary footage, I've never seen one that seems so authentic as "Paranormal Activity". You have to keep reminding yourself that this is fiction.

My idea of a really effective scary story are novels like those of Stephen King and Peter Straub, where the supernatural menace increases very gradually, so as not to overwhelm your getting to know that CHARACTERS first. Horror movies don't do that nearly as often as they should, but this picture does it very well indeed. True, Micah turns out to be a bit of a jerk, insisting that he is able to keep a handle on the situation even as the danger to Katie increases and it's clear he doesn't know what he's doing. But who HASN'T seen intelligent, sensible women in relationships with jerk-ish men? Besides, I started to see that Micah is in many respects the archetypal alpha male who can't accept not being on top of things... a little critique of Type A male behaviour. Not what you expect in a low-budget horror movie these days, but a nice touch. Micah and Katie really do come across not as noble movie characters, but flawed real people. All the better for pseudo-realism.

The movie achieves its realistic effects so powerfully that you don't even notice things like the way it keeps throwing you curves... that is, it doesn't scare you with the usual things they throw at you in horror movies, and when you expect a particular horrific thing coming at you in a certain scene because that's how horror movies always do things, it DOESN'T... then later on, when you anticipate a quiet moment, you'll get scared out of your wits. It's obviously very carefully and very well written, but you don't notice the writing any more than you notice Micah and Katie "acting". No seams showing here.

"Paranormal Activity" does follow the "Blair Witch" formula (which "Blair Witch" did NOT invent, of course) of keeping all the most terrifying stuff off screen, so you wind up imagining far worse that you could ever have been shown. But it does that WAY more effectively. I recall liking "Blair Witch", and feeling mildly uneasy watching it, but I was genuinely scared by THIS film. When any kind of movie is really effective, it makes you forget temporarily that you're in a theatre watching a movie, and it feels like the story is happening to you. For 90-some minutes in this movie you're personally put into the single scariest horror story of the past... oh, 30, maybe 40 years at least. Yes, scarier than "The Exorcist" too. If, after seeing it, you wind up having trouble getting to sleep that night because the normal creeking and house-settling type sounds seem a little too uncomfortably eerie, I wouldn't be at all surprised.