Paranormal Activity review

It bothers me a lot that most modern horror films don't pass my Horror Movie Quality Criteria (patent pending). The criteria are as follows:

1) The movie must contain less than one explosion
2) The movie must contain at least five seconds of frightening footage

 You'd think more horror films would be able to manage that, but apparently not. Thankfully paranormal activity, the original 2007 cut of which I got a chance to see yesterday, is both explosion free and features far more than five seconds of the good stuff.

[spoilers below! Don't read if you haven't seen it]




Paranormal Activity bares some resemblance to The Blair Witch Project- it's a breakout indie horror movie shot in a "found footage" format following a small number of characters played by unknown actors being menaced by an unseen supernatural force. So in other words it's a lot like The Blair Witch Project, only the actors aren't ad-libbing their lines and as far as I know the director didn't starve them. In fact you could pretty much classify it as Blair Witch IN A HOUSE.

A lot of the scares- the odd noises, the burnt photo in the attic- as well as the nightly escalation strongly resemble that movie as well, but there's enough originality here that it doesn't feel derivative. I also didn't feel that the shaky-cam style was as noticeable here as in recent movies like Cloverfield. Maybe I'm just getting used to it, but it could be because the camera is mounted on a tripod for a lot of the most important scenes.

I have to admit, the fact that the supernatural entity causing all the chaos is a demon was a bit dissapointing initially since it kind of strains my suspension of disbelief- while I don't believe in ghosts, I could just about be persuaded to be afraid of the possability, but the same can't be said for body-snatching demons. In the long run the demon did turn out to be a very effective antagonist for the characters, as well as a compelling rason for why they can't just leave their house to escape. Two scenes were a bit cheesy, though. The first was the bit with the footprints. When you've got a demon in your movie you really don't want to put audiences in mind of the usual bat-winged gargoyle thing with horns. Unfortunately the three toed foot prints did just that.

The other scene was the part near the end where Katie speaks with two voices briefly. It's kind of cool, but using a Voice of The Legion effect to signify demonic possession is a huge cliche, and it was already blindingly obvious what was going on.

The demon wasn't the only thing making me roll my eyes- the human character did that enough themselves. I know this seems like a petty complaint, but why in God's name didn't they close their bedroom door? Especially after Katie gets dragged down the hallway. I know it wouldn't actually have protected them in any way, but even still, that's what real people would have done in a similar situation.

Also, why did Micah never comment on the fact that the demon set the Ouija board on fire? He watched the tape of that night, and I can't imagine him not at least mentioning it to Katie since it was the first really blatent supernatural occurance they had seen at this point.