Low-budget Thriller Provides Low-budget Thrills; &Ldquo;paranormal Activity” Does Not Deliver on The Hype..

I don’t expect much from horror movies.  Give me my money’s worth of suspense and screams or jumps and gasps and I’m pretty much sated.  Whether it’s the gruesome death scenes of the Saw series or the grotesque humanoids that frequented “monster” movies of the 80’s or the more spiritually and intellectually evocative remakes coming out of Japan, audiences are constantly adapting to all the new ways to experience theatrical fright.  Blood and gore be damned, I’m actually more inclined to enjoy a subtle haunting where simple creativity controls my imagination.  Paranormal Activity, touted as “one of the scariest movies of all time,” should have administered this type of control.  Alas, the only control I experienced during this movie was the ability to hold my bladder in hopes that the end would be worth the wait.  It wasn’t—and I should have left halfway through, used the restroom, asked for a refund, and exchanged my ticket for Saw VI.

                Brilliantly scripted, Paranormal Activity sets the foundation early for what should have been one of horror’s new classics—taking its place among the better low-budget films of early cinema (Vincent Price comes to mind, even Alfred Hitchcock), playing off the success of recent “reality” movies as The Blair Witch Project.  A young, upwardly mobile middle-class couple experience paranormal activity during their typical sleeping hours while inside their new home.  Katie, a student, and Micah, a day trader, decide to investigate on their own and only seem to make things worse.  Eventually they determine that the “whatever-it-is” is somewhat attached to the lovely Katie (finding an improbably link to her past in what I believe to be the eeriest scene). 

                Oren Peli’s single-camera (often hand-held) philosophy leads to intimate cinematography that, paralleling the subtleties of the script, proves to be more than a one-trick camera pony.  Shooting every inch of footage from inside his own home Peli masterminded every angle with the astounding precision of a Hollywood veteran, and perhaps the familiarity for his set somewhat manifested in the relationship between the characters and the audience.  There is a level of comfort in this home that anyone could relate to their own, and every dark corner or open space reminds one of a similar place in their own immediate memory.  Every sound, every shadow, every carefully planned detail served a specific, ingenious purpose.

                It’s personal and—I’ll admit—creepy.  It works at a level most horror movies can’t even fathom.  And then…..

Nothing. 

                You see, unfortunately Peli’s slow moving plot is also captured in the severe lack of action through the first half of the film.  I actually found myself constantly checking the time, concerned that the movie would end before it got good.  Perhaps it was the lauded praise and the ingenious marketing over-hyping this one-hour and thirty-nine minute night-vision romp, but I never moved from my seat involuntarily.  Katie Featherston is believably terrified and Micah Sloat is appropriately annoying as updated “reality” versions of horror film stock characters and everything moves at a pace that is probably appropriate for this script and the original concept.  Perhaps it is Sloat’s two-dimensional “I love you Katie, but I won’t listen to you” motivations and his deliberately  exaggerated actions that failed to connect with me, but not once did I feel like his presence was meant as anything but a foil to aggravate the ghost (and perhaps the audience?).

This, of course, leads to an obvious ending to the plot (though in a somewhat surprising way) that, again, doesn’t deliver the same scares as the trailer(s).  (By the way, if you have seen ANY trailers for this movie that feature film ‘footage,’ then you have probably seen the entire three minutes of action contained in this film—including the ending).

                If audiences agreed this is “One of the scariest movies of all time” then perhaps they saw a different movie, because mine didn’t think so…but we did agree on something: as the final copyright idled on the screen and I stood up to leave, I overheard ghostly echoes of the same conversation containing the words:  “is it too late to get my money back?”

Keala Milles

October 24, 2009