Film Review: Paranormal Activity

A box of soap powder falling off a shelf in your laundry in the middle of the night may not seem like the most terrifying thing to ever happen. But, for ghost enthusiast and general scared little kid Oren Peli, it was the night that sparked the idea that would lead him to fund a $15,000 dollar horror film called Paranormal Activity. A $15,000 horror film which has since become the most profitable independent film ever made… and just to make sure he could truly exorcise the demons, he shot it over one week in his own house.

The film was originally screened in a handful of festivals way back in 2007 and was independently distributed on DVD by the film makers. One of those DVDs reportedly made its way into the hands of perhaps the most terrified wide eyed little boy, the geek master himself, Steven Spielberg. He shakily returned the film to DreamWorks the following day in a black plastic bag claiming that it was cursed and that his bedroom doors had locked themselves whilst he was viewing it, leaving him trapped inside.

That being said, it should be known that Spielberg is terrified of furniture.

So… An Oscar winning genius’ childhood fear, a locksmith, a very sell-able back story and 3 years later Paranormal Activity is released.

The film plays out in the hit and miss “found rushes” style of film making popularised by the massively successful Blair Witch Project but used most originally and effectively in the little seen Man Bites Dog.

A large HD camera is pointed at a mirror in a large suburban home. It’s a shot anyone who has ever held a camera, has gotten. He waves. Behind the camera is Micha (Micah Sloat), a day trader who we quickly learn could be quite rich and has bought the equipment in order to capture evidence of “strange goings on” frequently experienced in the night by his girlfriend, Katie (Katie Featherston) in their new house in San Dieago, California. Instantly, we feel as though we are on familiar ground.

The “loud nerd-jock with the camera” and his “‘don’t point the camera at me’ girlfriend” aspect of the film works for a while but soon wears thin. The actors can handle themselves but the characterisation is laughable. Thankfully, this isn’t Rosemary’s Baby and it’s not really that important to the overall impact of the film. The dynamic of the couple is one we’ve seen countless times before. She is the believer, more open and artistic, she studies languages and makes jewelry in her spare time. He is the skeptical, logical alpha male who feels the need to antagonize the ghost in the night and needs to solve everything on a practical level in order to understand it or sympathize.

We, of course are the viewers who watch snippets of them by day and a locked off camera shot of their bedroom at night.

Paranormal Activity succeeds in many ways on a similar level to all of the other films of its ilk. It relies on our fascination with voyeurism and plays with the advantage of having an omnipotent camera (and viewer) quite well but sadly it doesn’t really do anything that different. Its biggest let down is that it falls into all of the traps that most horror films do; Peli can’t resist the urge of explaining far too much and the half arsed explanation of the unexplainable sags the whole film down in the middle with one heavy and idiotic back story piece where the pair watch an related exorcism on a website.

The hype surrounding the film and it immense twitterablitlity has reached a pitch of fever resigned only for the vampire saga whose name we do not speak, but is it at all warranted?

Well… yes and no.

Paranormal Activity has some pretty scary moments (made all the more scary when you get home to an empty house on a cold wet October night) and for it’s lack of budget it’s power is undeniable. It’s an atmospheric film but one whose scares only come from a carefully built up set piece and in this case a reliance on repetition (the static shot from the camera in the bedroom) which sadly becomes a boring signpost that something terrifying is going to happen. It’s not as obvious as someone momentarily walking backwards down a dark alleyway but it may as well be. The time code in the bottom left corner of the screen speeding up and slowing down, telling us to the minute to brace ourselves kind of back fires on itself and on the tension of the whole film.

That being said though, Paranormal Activity does enough to to scrape by as a decent horror film. It’s low key scares somehow do get into your head and even I, a self confessed horror freak boy, got the willies for a few nights afterward. It’s a good and relatively smart cinema experience, alas, it’s also one that more experienced fans of the genre may have seen before, but as a marvel of cheap suburban horror it fares very well this Halloween amongst the other slow motion high budget brainless gore fests on offer.