Paranormal Activity: A Great Movie Under Certain Conditions

Paranormal Activity is a hard movie for me to review. From the onset, you will need disclaimers:

 

1. If you are a fan of horror films and like the feeling of being immersed in a story, do not go and see this movie until it has a completely rid itself its middle-to-high school attendees. Advice: Go in two weeks of the posting of this review.
2. If you are not a fan of shaky cameras or generally get motion sick, this may not be the movie for you.
3. If you love old people, go and see Paranormal Activity on a Sunday afternoon for optimal viewing.

 

Paranormal Activity starts as it would eventually end, abruptly. As the viewer, it would appear that this late-twenties, early-thirties couple have decided to record events of what Katie [Katie Featherston], the girlfriend, thinks are supernatural.  Micah [Micah Sloat], the boyfriend is your typical 'horror-movie skeptic'. Micah takes matters into his own hands by investing in a high tech recording equipment most notably the camera. Given the movie is shot from the first and sometimes non-person perspective, the viewer eye is drawn to every nook and every cranny of the couples well furnished, post-graduate apartment.

 

What you won't like.

 

The Paranormal Activity lives and dies by the convention that this is an account of an actual couple making decisions about what they are experiencing. However, there comes a certain point in the movie where Micah should have been convinced that there is something wrong here and it required immediate help from everyone him and his girlfriend can get in contact with. Why is it, movies like these, whenever a man sees that someone may have been in his home his first instinct isn't to call the cops? A logical thinking person would.

 

A logical thinking person would not just hire a psychic [which they did] or call the cops [which is what most people would do], but they would seek shelter with friends and family. This did not happen and unfortunately is where you the viewer have to buy in to the convention that they are recording this account having exhausted all these measures.

The ending, though scary, is very horror movie.  With the unfortunate comparison to The Blair Witch Project [a movie I was not particularly fond of], the ending almost takes the viewer completely out of the 'first-person account' and sends a subtle reminder that you are definitely watching a horror movie ape a couples [faux] paranormal experience.

 

What you will like.

 

The characters, Katie and Micah seem to be someone you could know. The development leading up to the escalating horror [and it does...if you buy into conventions of the movie] was superb. Director, Oren Peli, does a superb job of fleshing out the "Why and How" this couple works. The way that Katie and Micah play off of each other, while having disagreements, I found to be genuine.

 

The 'scary' aspect of Paranormal Activity is more for the ride home. Admittedly, there are moments of this movie where the audience [again filled with teenagers] screamed and jumped, but some fell flat. The real scary aspect of Paranormal Activity is the feeling that stays with you [if there is one] when you leave the theater. There were so many moments in the movie where the camera is rolling and the audience is waiting for something...anything. Your eyes are fixed on the shadows, because we have been conditioned to believe that this is were all the 'bad things' come from, when you leave the theater, you keep an eye on those shadows. You keep an ear out for creaks and bumps because you are in a heightened sense of awareness.

 

Paranormal Activity is a good movie. It may not scare every single person who watches, but there is something there. Aside from some leaps of logic, the characters are enjoyable. You really feel as if you are along for the ride for a good majority of the movie. If you can get over a semi-cliche ending and avoid a theater filled with 8th graders, then I would say the only way to experience Paranormal Activity is in a booming theater.

I give Paranormal Activity...

Two Middle Fingers Up From Scary Spice

Comments

[Alphonse]

this movie suck men, is more scary a dentist date that this movie, when I saw then for first and unique time I end with a respiratory problem so I needed, this problem wasn't for fear, was for nausea, really the movie suck, and there's nobody that can change my opinion.