WIRED Tight editing and ghostly effects create genuinely chilling experience. Throughout Paranormal Activity’s 90-minute run time, you’ll experience a low-budget thrill ride that can only be described as exhausting and terrifying. The noises that fill the couple’s horrifying nights get under your skin, and the possibility of what might happen stirs your brain. His cut-rate film is highly successful in both thought and execution: The film is scoreless, the editing is tight and the no-name actors are believable. However, at the screening attended, this did not prevent audience members from squealing and screaming to beat hell.ĭirector Peli has done what many considered impossible in a post- Blair Witch world. Many times the camera remains completely still and, in reality, not that much happens. Unlike other mockumentary films, the shots in Paranormal Activity are agonizingly long and uncomfortable. The recurring time-coded bedtime sequences make this movie stand out as something special. Their reactions, concern and, most importantly, fear come across as completely genuine. Both Featherston and Sloat do an admirable job with a limited script and concept. While Katie’s descriptions of her past troubles and her current plight might prove boring for fans of the grotesque excesses favored by many modern horror directors, they will be refreshing for fans of old-school ghost tales. On a hunch, I broke out my Hellboy Ouija board post-screening and very politely asked the spirits, "WTF?" To my surprise, the planchette did indeed begin to creep across the board, but the message was always the same: "s … u … c … k … e … r.We quickly discover that guttural breathing and hovering masses have been haunting Katie’s bedside - her personal space - since she was 8 years old. It'd be laughable if it weren't such a flagrant "fuck you" to fans of genuine horror cinema. Yeah, Paranormal Activity is exactly like that but without the one-trick pony grazing in the verdant field. Precious little ensues until those final 10 seconds, and even those will arrive as no surprise to anyone who ever bothered to open one of those faddish "shocker" e-mails of a few years back (you know, the ones that guided you to a website featuring some random scene of pastoral beauty which dawdled on forever until suddenly a loud noise and a scary face blasted onto your monitor and freaked your adrenals into overdrive). Plagued by mysterious thuds in the night, Micah invests in some pricey video- and sound-recording gear and begins taping the couple as they sleep. What little there is of a plot hangs on the irritatingly senseless, often just plain dopey suburban couple of Katie (Featherston) and Micah (Sloat). Paranormal Activity 2, was released on October 22, 2010, and was followed by another prequel titled Paranormal Activity 3 on October 21, 2011. At 96 minutes, it's at least 90 minutes too long, and most damning of all, it's just plain dull. Who says you can't have your shit and eat it too?) Like The Blair Witch Project, its far creepier antecedent, Paranormal Activity purports to exist as actual found footage – the opening text says it was discovered by the San Diego Police Department – but that's no excuse for foisting a poorly acted (whoops! make that "realistic"), shoddily conceived, anti-art-directed nonstarter that pays off only in its final 10 seconds on a gullible moviegoing public that only wants to have its collective hair raised. (On the other hand, Paramount's midnight-screening, street-team hype machine is to be congratulated for pulling such a fast one on both audiences and critics alike. It is instead nothing more or less than an excruciatingly tedious YouTube gag cleverly marketed to go viral in the broadest and most box-office-friendly way. Don't believe the hype: Paranormal Activity may be a lot of things, but the words "scary" and "movie" are not among them.
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