Paranormal Activity

Much of the hype surrounding Paranormal Activity relates to the movie's microbudget of $15,000 or to its grassroots viral marketing campaign. But all of this ignores the fact that freshman director Oren Peli has come up with a genuine creepfest that is a load of fun.

Katie and Micah are a young couple living together in San Diego. Fate has endowed Katie with a case of extremely bad luck as she has been beset by a shadowy visitor in the night ever since she was eight years old when her family home mysteriously burned to the ground. The unwanted nocturnal guest has been away for a while but now has returned. Unexplained noises in the wee hours of the morning have prompted Micah into action. In this case he has bought a video camera to try and capture whatever it is spooking the house on tape or, rather, on his laptop's hard drive.

As with The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity is entirely made up of footage from a camcorder supposedly found in the aftermath of the events portrayed. Here, we see the couple's relationship play out during daylight hours while at night the camera is, thankfully, mounted on a tripod in their bedroom set to record the source of strange noises. Micah, a cocksure day trader, is skeptical of supernatural claims and likes to poke fun at Katie's increasing fear. But, as the days and nights wear on, it becomes apparent that her dread is quite justified.

Since the story is told solely by camcorder footage, we never get to know much about our protagonists aside from their occupations and brief bits of background. I personally found Micah to be incredibly annoying but Peli deserves credit for being able to transcend this and a lack of plot by ratcheting up the tension slowly and throwing in some horror movie clichés very effectively along the way. He uses a sort of minimalist approach whereby we essentially see the same scene repeated but with minor variations. At first there's just some unexplained noises. Then on another night the bedroom door mysteriously closes. Whatever it is that haunts their home gradually makes its presence known increasingly more dramatically.



Along the way there are some moments common in the genre such as the tense scene investigating the attic and a psychic who, unable to help the couple, can only offer the best line in the movie, "I can't be in this room", before bolting out the front door.

Paranormal Activity is as frightening as it is because it keeps the door closed, so to speak, until the very end. No back story is developed for that which haunts Katie which in turn would lead to a solution. It remains unseen. Aside from one scene out on the patio, the action takes place within the house which lends an air of claustrophobia. The movie also makes great use of silence which only helps the tension build to almost unbearable heights. I would also argue that it utilizes the wide screen very well. As you can see above, the bedroom scenes place the open door which leads to the hallway and downstairs on the extreme left-hand side of the screen while Katie and Micah slumber on the right. I was kept on my toes as my eyes were forced to dart around the shots looking for any sign of something spooky happening.

I have a few gripes but most of them relate to light switches and how the camera is lugged from room to room in certain scenes. These are quite minor and my biggest complaint isn't about the movie per se but rather…POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD…



…that the big shock ending was given away in the trailer. WTF? Unfortunately this meant that, after Katie undergoes her transformation of sorts, I knew what the end was going to be like and merely had to wait for it to come. Who thought it would be a good idea to put the finale into the trailer?

The ending being shown in theatres was not the original. If you're curious as to how it originally concluded, check out this article at Rope of Silicon.




…END OF SPOILERS….

Overall, Peli has created a good gothic tale using well-worn yet highly effective techniques to install dread into the audience which makes for a thrilling hour and a half.