Paranormal Activity - A Movie Review

Paranormal Activity - big hype, faux low budget, little worth.

It's not that this was a bad movie. It's just that it wasn't good enough to live up to the hype that surrounded it. It was big on jump-scares, which wasn't surprising, given the kind of movie it was, but I've seen creepier jump scares in movies that don't get half the hype that this did.

It really is a shame when the hype ends up more interesting than the movie itself.

The plot of this movie was a fairly simple one. A couple have been experiencing paranormal phenomena in their house, incidents that gradually escalate in intensity. They call in experts to try to help them, but the experts leave the with little information and no help, or just don't return their calls. The whole series of disturbances revolves around Katie, the female lead, with her boyfriend Micah reacting rather badly to them all. Things escalate, in the end, to a very fatal conclusion.

Hands up if you've ever heard that story before. Yeah, it's not exactly rating high on the originality scale.

The incidents are interesting in the way the escalate. Thumping noises and the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Powerdy footprints on the floor. The door moving on its own. Katie acting as though she's not all there, doing things she doesn't remember doing. A photograph being found that was supposedly lost when Katie's old house burned down as a child. Legitimately creepy moments, I have to admit, and quite in keeping with many hauntings I've read about, so the movie gets points for that.

In one particular incident, though, the effects just went over the top for me. Katie and Micah have left the house after an argument about Micah bringing a Ouija board in. After they leave, the camera is still running, and it catches the sound of footsteps, then the houseplants swaying as though in a breeze. The Ouija board pointer begins to move on its own, and then -- I kid you not -- catches on fire! I know the fire was supposed to be a hint towards the fact that the demon haunting Katie was probably responsible for burning down her old house, but the effect ruined a creepy scene for me by just being overkill.

The whole thing was shot as though by a handheld video camera, albeit a very high-end one. This was bought by Micah as a way to try to get evidence of the ghost or demon, and this is what lends itself to the low-budget, "I'm really there" style that seems to have been regaining popularity lately. It loses points here, though, for having scene cuts and transitions not in keeping with the plot of the movie and the style. Sure, the police find Micah's body (after the ending of the movie) and probably confiscate the laptop and all collected footage, and then... go through it and decide it'll be a great movie and add scene cuts?

And I'm not just talking about cutting out huge chunks of night and day where nothing relevent happens. If they left all that in, it's be a 21-day movie and would be very boring. But in the middle of conversations, the camera cuts from a close-up of one character's face when he's talking, to a zoomed-out shot of Katie talking across the room. It takes away from the "I'm really there" feel that they were going for, and feels far too polished. It's not supposed to be slick. It's supposed to be rough around the edges and full of blurry footage as the camera pans from one character to the next. Other scenes do it that way, the ones filled with tense moments and believable stammering as the characters get scared? Why remove that for more dialogue-heavy scenes? Were the producers and directors afraid that dialogue would be too much for the audience and so kept slick film cuts in to keep attention, or did they just forget the style they were going for?

While Katie and Micah don't win the award for stupidest people in a horror movie, they do come close for being pretty dense about some things. Micah goes looking for demon info on the Internet and comes across the story of a woman who went through the exact same disturbances that he and Katie are going through. He finds this... but not websites that deal with wardings and bindings for malevolent supernatural entities? I can Google "how to get rid of a demon" and come with with half a dozen sites that recommend consulting spiritual advisors, blessings, warding with salt and holy water, and any number of things. But Micah apparently ignores all of this and instead goes through page after page of results to find the account of a woman in the 60s who had all the same stuff happen to her? He could find stuff about EVPs and spreading talcum powder to get footprints, but not this stuff? Suspension of disbelief only holds so far, and this really stretched it.

But finding wardings and bindings would have made it all less scary if they'd worked. But really, if they'd tried to bind the demon and only suceeded in making it more angry, that would have added to the fear factor for me. Anything that can resist a binding is something worth paying heed to.

Like I said, this movie wasn't bad. I've definitely seen worse. But it didn't live up to the hype; didn't even come close, and had some shortcomings that common sense could see through, and that really took it down a few notches.

I wouldn't buy this movie. It was worth the rental fee, and not much else. It doesn't have much rewatch value unless you're a hardcore horror fan or you just have to own every new big new movie that comes out. Rent it once, maybe watch the theatrical release and the alternate ending, and then don't think much about it again. A few good scares do not make it worth $20+.