Directed By Oren Peli
Starring Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat and Mark Fredrichs.
This is the kind of review I hate writing.
Films like Paranormal Activity – small films that slowly build and thrive on tension and dread – are ones tailor-made to be viewed cold, without any real knowledge of the plot save for the basic concept and without any preconceived notions of hype. The latter might be impossible to avoid at this point; with over two years of word-of-mouth buzz spreading throughout its shaky road to a theatrical release and now earning an indie sleeper blockbuster release comparable to The Blair Witch Project, complete with similar cries of “Scariest movie in the history of forever”, Paranormal Activity comes ready-packed with hefty baggage of hype and expectation. But please, do yourself a favour: Ignore all reviews and Wikipedia plot summaries, haul ass in the direction of Canada if you spot that wretched ‘We’ll show you the whole movie in 2 minutes so you don’t need to pay to see it!’ trailer from the Robert Zemeckis school of advertising starting up on-screen, and try to leave your expectations at the door. Whether you love it or hate it, it’s a film best seen cold.
It opens with a familiar title card, stating that this is the found footage of Micah S. and Katie F., recovered by local police. Yes, it’s one of those films. And right away, you’ll be able to gauge whether this is the film for you or not; shot cinéma vérité style with a single high-tech handheld camera, Paranormal Activity is the video account of 20 days and increasingly terrifying nights in the new home of couple Katie and Micah. Strange noises and unexplained weirdness have begun occuring, from otherworldly whispering in bedroom corners at night to randomly running faucets. Brash day trader boyfriend Micah rushes out to buy a camera, eager to get a trace of something on tape, having more luck in one night than 97 seasons of Most Haunted ever did as the ghostly torment starts to escalate with each passing night, and without a Winchester brother in sight to help.
If you were in the ‘Blair Witch was utter garbage sprinkled with diced crap! Where was the CGI ghost?!’ camp, then this isn’t the film for you; Paranormal Activity is gratifyingly born from the ‘less is more’ mantra of subtlety and suggestive scares, allowing strange noises and intense atmosphere to conjure far creepier images in your mind than any prosthetic or pixel mess ever could. Which is perhaps the film’s biggest failing; the sheer unnerving effectiveness of something as simple as a thump and a groan on the soundtrack in the hands of director Oren Peli only serves to highlight how poorly the final, more overt scares fit the mood of the film, with a tacked-on jump-scare ending that was added long after the first few screenings and feels like a product of the Hollywood ‘cheap scare’ mentality that the rest of the film eschews so well. As a result, the film hits its peak before the finale and never figures out how to end satisfyingly – something solidified by the sheer number of alternate endings in rotation for the film (3 of which saw theatre screens at various times, with an unknown number of endings filmed but never screened).
Micah, in the tried-and-true tradition of annoying horror movie assclowns who illicit irritated cries of “Ugh, don’t do that! How retarded are you, you douchepuddle?!” is unintentionally the target of perhaps as much audience scorn as the malevolent evil terrorising the couple; the worst on-screen boyfriend in quite a while, his arrogant and belligerent frat-boy-level maturity result in him simply doing everything possible to antagonise both the spirit and poor Katie, ignoring her wishes at every turn despite her sobbing, anguished pleas to not make things worse (a Ouija board scene in particular will make you want to impale him on a fencepost). He actually feels like a real character – we see that at first he’s dismissive of the ghostly goings on, hoping he might get something cool on tape for the novelty value, then when things escalate to the point where the cause is undeniable, his motives become that of the protective alpha-male, beating his chest and stubbornly refusing to let anyone else handle the situation. He never comes across as a one-note character, but it’s unfortunate that he’s portrayed as such an insufferably unlikeable one. Katie Featherstone, on the other hand, is a wonderful find – she’s not just a naturally-talented actress, but an adorable and incredibly endearing one, too. Her natural presence and ability is the crux of the film, and she sells it so well that we care infinitely more about her character; the haunting scenes become all the more effective when there’s a character we empathise with, care about and don’t wish to see in harm’s way, and her later scenes are heart-breaking and especially scary as a result.
For much of its runtime, Paranormal Activity is an intensely creepy and unsettling film, and easily the most frightening one since The Blair Witch Project. Which should be your litmus test for whether it’s a film you’ll love; it’s destined to be just as divisive a film, but if the suggestive and unnerving scares of Blair Witch wriggled under your skin like nothing else, then you’ll no doubt stumble home from seeing Paranormal Activity shaken and uneasy, rushing to turn all the lights on and avoiding wandering upstairs alone for days. It’s just a shame that writer/director Peli couldn’t handle the final moments with the unrelentingly frightening finesse and subtlety that its earlier moments displayed.
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Paranormal Activity is in US theatres now and hits UK cinemas on November 27th.