Review: Paranormal Activity

in Culture Movies by Karl Sharma — October 27, 2009 at 1:15 pm | 5 comments

Paranormal Activity, a horror film directed by Oren Peli, might at first be thought of as a clone of another well known horror film, The Blair Witch Project. Both are low budget horror films shot with a handheld camera and both spread like wildfire thanks to viral marketing to become sleeper hits.

Like the film before it, Paranormal Activity begins and ends with the same cinematic device that Blair Witch uses; realism. Paramount Pictures makes the audience believe that the film is footage found from a camera chronicling the ignominious fates of aspiring film-makers who ventured too deep into the supernatural. Because this trope has been used in Blair Witch and other films such as Cannibal Holocaust, Cloverfield, and REC, it seems rather trite. However, by the finale Paranormal seems even more chilling than the aforementioned films. Despite the similarities, Peli’s film is far superior to the Blair Witch Project in terms of quality.

The unlucky couple in the film, Katie and Micah, is portrayed by Katie Featherston and Micah Stout, both debuting as film actors. Their roles were particularly demanding because of the lack of a script; they were only given an outline and were expected to improvise their dialogue. As a result, the dialogue flows well and seems natural. The characters are consequently much easier to relate to and easier to root for. This makes the film more terrifying as the audience does not want to see the characters come to any harm, a direct contrast to Blair Witch, when I was personally rooting for the Witch to kill those arrogant students. Although Micah can be quite dense and tactless and Katie somewhat strung out, these faults make them more endearing, and let’s face it, who wouldn’t be strung out while being stalked by a literal demon?

The demon of the film is never fully explained. Because of its demonic status, there is no need to delve into its past nor do the characters really seek to communicate with it. In fact, Katie specifically does not wish to contact it, in contrast to other horror films where the protagonists usually try to seek some way to approach their tormentors.

Because the demon remains unexplained throughout, the audience’s imagination runs amok, and this, in the same vein as Jaws, makes the villain more terrifying. It is explained that an evil spirit has been haunting Katie since she was only eight years old, and that while it sometimes leaves her alone for years, it always returns again. The demon has also caused physical harm as it is heavily implied that it was responsible for the loss of Katie’s child hood home in a fire soon after the first haunting began.

Now, after years of dormancy, it has come back into Katie’s life, prompting Micah to purchase a camera to record any activity.

The demon starts off small at first, spending its time knocking on walls, flicking lights and messing with Katie’s keys. The couple consults a psychic who tells them that the beast feeds on negative energy to become stronger, and the best way to counter the demon is to not let it get to them. But, as Micah sets up the camera to capture the haunting, he antagonizes the creature, causing it to resort to more terrifying methods to antagonize the couple so they can release more negative energy, beginning a vicious cycle as it increases its strength and leads to the horrifying finale.

Paranormal Activity has been marketed as the “most horrifying film ever,” which is more a sign of the state of horror films than it is about the quality of the film. As demonstrated by the Saw franchise, Hostel, and various other Eli Roth and Rob Zombie films, horror today is all about gore and mutilation. Subtle, creeping horror films have unfortunately been rarities in recent horror cinema, which is a big reason why this film was so overly hyped.

Although it doesn’t quite live up to the “most horrifying” standard, it sure comes close, and its success will hopefully see a flowering of non-gory horror films.

Review: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

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