Deciding to watch this film during daylight hours didn’t help with its terrifying story. I had to stop the film a couple of times and catch my breath before I could go back to it. This chilling horror was directed by Oren Peli and starred little known Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat and Mark Fredrichs. It was set in a suburban home in America in the present day.
The story centres on the characters Katie and Micah, a young couple that had been living together for a few years, and the unusual activity they began to experience at night. Katie had experienced unsettling occurrences such as, shadows, fire and voices since the age of 8 and had even had to move home because of it. Wherever she went the apparent presence would follow. These occurrences were not constant, but after a few nights of activity Micah decides to set up a camera and microphone in their bedroom to record anything that happens while they are asleep. The footage that is recorded accelerates over the course of 21 nights; starting with running footsteps and ending with dragging, biting, possession and one night that no one will forget.
This frightening story was accentuated by the technique of filming in a documentary style. This was achieved by getting the actors to do the filming and essentially playing themselves. The shaking and dark camera angles added to suspense and allowed the audience to empathise with the feelings and the fear of the characters. It also made the film as real to life as possible and appear as if it could be happening to someone somewhere in the world. Oren Peli’s direction was the driving force behind creating the documentary and real-life style of this movie. The actors were not really given a script and were told to react to whatever happened around them, therefore, Peli had complete control over how he wanted them to act and exactly when he wanted them to be scared. To achieve this he used familiar aspects from other horror films to comprise this movie; however he seemed to combine these features into, possibly, a new genre of cinema. This film was very much a kin to The Blair Witch Project, in the fact that there was no script, the actors themselves did the filming and they had no idea what was going to happen next or what blood curdling noise they were going to hear. There was also a very obvious connection to The Exorcist, however, with today’s advances in CGI it was a lot more realistic when compared to the effects available in 1973.
The setting in this movie played a large part in making it ‘real’. In ‘The Blair Witch Project’ the characters where in the woods, possibly a common horror movie setting due to the risk of danger and lack of safety, but not a place that everyone frequents on a regular basis, in fact, some people may have never even set foot in a wood. Therefore, it does slightly distance itself from the realm of “this could happen to me”. Moving this genre of film to a regular suburban house immediately makes a closer connection to the audience, they start to look at it as their own home. Your home is supposed to be the one place that you are safe and secure, where you won’t get hurt and you can feel completely relaxed and comfortable. By setting a movie like this in a normal looking two bedroom house it eliminates these feelings from the audience and makes them think that maybe nowhere is safe from a presence that is clearly more than just a ghost.
Personally, I believe this film achieved everything it set out to; scare the audience witless. By using the combination of previously explored techniques in a new way/setting (moving the actors self filming from the woods to inside a home) Oren Peli brought a whole new way of scaring people to the cinema. As a member of that audience, I was not sorry I had paid money to go and see this movie, it was worth every penny. However, I believe you should know what you are putting yourself up for. If you go into this movie thinking it’s just another horror film and expecting the same old tricks to make you jump out of your seat, you will be shockingly surprised at what you find waiting for you in the screen.