Paranormal Activity
This film jolts you. Watch this alone and be sure that all of the lights out. Get through the first 25 minutes of home video and you are well on your way to getting spooked.
This film is possible due to prosumer handheld cameras and the imagination of writer/director Oren Peli and the cast that he found on Craigslist. The film that cost around $11,000.00 to make has earned over $100 Million. It is The Blair Witch Project of this decade.
Paranormal Activity is not gore, slasher, bloated budgeted horror coated with comedic moments and interjected with sly comments. It is not a deranged maniac set loose with a band of special effects artists nearby to give us gruesome carnal delights. No. This is where the road to horror should lead you; frights with goose bumps and the occasional blurting of expletives.
Its opening thanks authorities at a local police department for this footage and we are treated to meeting the couple, learn who and what they are all about, and their dilemma. Katie is a graduate student and Micah is a day trader in which he stays at home in their modest two floor home with in ground pool in Southern California. Micah’s personality has much to be desired and at times you may question why she stays with this guy who is demonstrative of his uncaring for her concerns. Katie, with all of her shrilling and tears, is much more serious and a stronger individual who is the main focus of the “being” that haunts the household.
Katie invites a man who specializes in such paranormal activities to investigate their home and is met with Micah’s amiable hostility. Katie explains that she has been haunted her entire life by this thing that has now resurfaced after years free from it. With haste the specialist flees referring them to a demonologist.
The video camera is the tool used by Micah to observe the nightly goings on as the two sleep. Of course, the childlike Micah uses the camera to annoy his girlfriend in the bathroom and wishes to tape bedroom activities that she whole-heartedly refutes. The camera acts as a surveillance cam and then things start slowly happening before the home becomes sanctity for the unholy.
The surveillance footage works because the audience is the silent observer as the couple is observed by something invisible in which they lay prostrate and are as defenseless as the audience to do something about it. When Micah operates the camera we get his perspective. Toward the finale, when what occurs downstairs is only heard and not seen (because this is the very first time that he does not take the camera with him) it is horrifying to not witness it and the effect works. The final scenes of surveillance video are dramatic and can stand on its own against any multi-shot finely edited horror production.
My only gripe is that the “raw footage” at the beginning could have been more interesting and the scene with the Ouiji Board was a little too over the top. Since this was a no budget film, the director must have wanted to add something to entice the film festival people and give it more productions value. With such a film the Ouiji Board scene was not needed, the film works on its own merit.
This film is refreshing as it demonstrates that there is talent out there working on micro-budgets and with people whose resumes are mostly blank pages. The Hollywood process will continue to make shlock with obscene amounts of cash and ignore said talent. Will Paranormal Activity 2 fall victim to the system or will the brilliance of Oren Peli shine once again?
Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat were believable throughout. For two actors that have absolutely no screen credit prior to this it must be mind bending for them that their box office receipts are much more than many actors’ lifetimes.
It is unbelievable that these people stayed in the house and when the demonologist is out of town, why didn’t they call a priest, rabbi, sheikh, monk, or isn’t the Church of Satan in California? Indeed, when what happens happens, the result is truly jarring. Any film that makes you ponder over it a few days after seeing it is truly worth it.
