It was the summer of 1999. My relatives from Switzerland were over for a month. One evening, I decided to treat them to a try of what our local big screen had to offer. We were indecisive about what to watch, but eventually we came to the consensus to see the “Blair Witch Project”. It sounded like a fresh avant-garde movie so we decided to give it a whirl. Close to 200 dollars later in tickets and refreshments, and there we were half-nauseous in front of the screen watching very shaky camera footage. Trying to close our eyes to avoid motion sickness, and hoping it would turn out to be better, we sat through the entire movie, which became more a burden than pleasure. I remember saying upon exiting that I never would I see a movie like that again. Last night, I proved myself wrong when I saw “Paranormal Activity”.
The movie pretty much presents itself as a true documentary much like Blair Witch, but almost all the WebPages I have come across all say the same thing: it is an untrue story. For me at least, I feel a sense of being cheated. Producers of this movie purposely kept things vague in order draw people into thinking it was a true story. If it is a fictitious story, you think they would have the courtesy to tell the audience, instead of playing with our minds and time.
This is film making at its worst! They feed off the ignorance of the audience to turn what amounts to a measly $15,000 dollar production into a life’s savings. It simply is not fair that these movies gross more than movies that are made the old school way with real actors and real scripts.
The truth issue aside, if the movie were a good one, I wouldn’t be writing this article. As its title suggests, there really isn’t much in the way of paranormal activity aside from moving doors, (someone pulling a string) breezes, (simple fan does the trick) and loud noises (some basic sound editing). Instead of getting a good movie, we get the same bedroom scene repeated over and over again to the point of nausea. The only thing that could redeem a movie like this would be the fact that it was actually true, but even then it would be sadistic to watch.
If you really want to see the movie, I would suggest waiting for the DVD release, although I don’t think it would be worth the 5 dollar rental charge. Maybe just watch it on-line as I did.
