Paranormal Activity | Horror | rated R (L,V) | starring Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat | directed by Oren Peli | 1:28 mins
Micah is immediately dismissive of his girlfriend Katie’s fears that there is something supernatural in their house. Her entire life she has felt a menacing force around her and now it is growing more fierce. So Micah sets up cameras to record their nighttime sleeping habits hopefully catching on film whatever is giving Katie bruises or lay her fears to rest. What he sees and hears on the video defies explanation and sends them into a hopeless, increasingly frightening, search for answers.
Just when you thought you’d seen it all from the Hand Held Camera Movie comes something different. We’ve seen a few kids lost in the woods, a giant monster attack, the zombie apocalypse and any number of things from the independent film crowd through the lens of a Handy Cam that some character just can’t put down, but Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity finds a new way to use it as a storytelling devise. Instead of running around with it, creating a chaotic blur and hoping the audience’s imagination will fill in the gaps with something scarier he just sets it down and leaves it on. This set up works brilliantly for Activity because it gives us the illusion we are seeing something unfiltered, uncensored, and that something is happening before our eyes without cheats and cut-aways. It’s a refreshing take.
In the Torture Porn era, Paranormal Activity is a low-key movie that pries into natural human fears and manages to chill to the bone with them. The subtle creepy movement of a door. A shadow passing over the floor. A ripple in the bedsheets. And all of it happening at night while you sleep. What happens around you when you’re asleep, unconscious and helpless? It’s a primal question.
The movie builds very well. It starts out with a few occurrences that can be written off as coincidence or maybe the wind. Micah plays the perfect d-bag boyfriend, who mocks his girlfriend’s fears and plays around with the camera. Their realistically realized relationship, with a normal amount of strain and understanding, goes a long way to sell the movie. Even in the face of recorded evidence he is only fascinated, trying to play the tough guy until he can deny the events no more. He eggs on the demon in a way that creates a cycle of fear that feeds on itself, only making it stronger. Bit by bit, night by night, the demon gets more hostile and the movie more tense. An intensity that comes from the fear of the unknown, fighting something you can’t see and don’t know how to stop. What’s truly scary about the movie is the sense of hopelessness it conveys. It slowly boxes it’s characters and it’s audience into a corner that they can’t see a way out of. Like many of these small films, PA builds to one really good scare and this is one case where it is worth it. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
Seen mostly through a night vision camera, the movie falters when it steps out of that format or into territory you’d expect to see in a more conventional Hollywood horror movie but here sticks out like a sore thumb. Like a silly scene where Micah leaves a Ouija board unattended or when the two go up to the attic and make a useless discovery that would fit more in a J-horror movie then this one. But even the attic scene, as silly as it is, is toe-curling to watch as we inside the camera are shoved head-long up into this dark space that even Micah doesn’t go.
Paranormal Activity doesn’t re-invent the wheel. It’s not going to make you loose sleep for weeks or shut it off out of fear like Steven Speilburg supposedly did. And truthfully, I’m still not quite sure what I think of the ending. Does it elevate the movie to something creepier or does it break the format for something cheaper and more “movie-like”? But it is a ghost story that effective conjures up dread and tension in a completely bloodless cinematic trap. It’s a handheld film that wont make you nauseous or break the illusion by trying to appear more real then it is. It got me to the edge of my seat and gave me goosebumps and that is not common.