Film Review: ‘Paranormal Activity’ – 4.0/10

Paranormal Activity (2007/2009)
Written by Joé McKen on Sunday, November 01, 2009

A typical shot from Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity.

Paranormal Activity is a small production that has been billed, even by the most prominent of critics (see Roger Ebert, for example), as being genuinely captivating and frightening. Even the tagline boasts of its supposed terrifying potential by “warning you” (ie. taunting you) not to See It Alone. After hearing nothing but praise for the film here and there, including from my father who was confident that this film might be the first that would actually succeed in scaring me, I walked into the theater half-hoping that for once, I would indeed experience fear. Only, I came out snickering in derision and already set on writing what was going to be my first mediocre film review.

4.0/10 Katie: Katie Featherston Micah: Micah Sloat Directed & written by Oren Peli. Running time: 86 mins. Rated R.

Paranormal Activity takes after The Blair Witch Project in many ways, which is never a good thing, considering how very intensely the latter sucked. The basic premise is identical: the characters are either frightened or curious about suspected strange phenomena, and decide to try and capture any evidence of weird occurrences on tape with a handheld camera. We then follow them for the length of the movie as things get progressively weirder and weirder and the characters grow more and more paranoid, soon to the point of near-hysteria.

In this round, we follow the chronicles of Katie and Micah (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) as they first try to comprehend what may (or may not) be happening, then later try to stay sane (and safe) amidst growing terror. Katie has been haunted by some sort of “presence” her entire life, one that seems to enjoy making odd noises and moving objects around – all conveniently at night. You can’t say supernatural entities are a very original or imaginative bunch, if their depiction in movies is anything to judge by. To try and document these strange happenings, Micah buys a high-end (and rather egregious-looking) camera, hoping to catch the perpetrator red-handed. Which I assume is difficult if it cannot be seen, but let’s forgive Micah’s lack of logic for the moment.

Strangeness does indeed begin happening, from scratching sounds to objects being moved around inexplicably, and it is all caught on tape. Katie quickly becomes agitated and frightened, yet Micah, the typical man, is more interested in figuring out just what is going on than in trying to comfort his girlfriend. They bring over a “psychic” (Mark Fredrichs) who specializes in ghosts, yet while he indeed informs them that there is an otherworldly presence about the house, it is not a ghost (which is, so he says, a human spirit), but – *drumroll* – a demon. He advises them to refer to a demonologist – yet, when the time comes for them to seek his help, he is conveniently “away for a few days”. This is about as unrealistic as is anything else in this film: for one thing, Roger Ebert informs us that there are likely to be more demonologists in California than there are poets. (Which, to a rational-minded skeptic like me, is actually quite more scarifying (yes, that’s a word) than the idea of demons, ghosts, or evil in-laws.)

The entire film is made to look as though it was truly made without a director, writer, producer, or any technical mastery of any kind (despite the fact that the roles of director and writer are filled in by Oren Peli). It is made to make us believe we are looking at actual footage shot by amateurs who were being haunted by some malevolent entity, and quite frankly, this is where my many problems with the film arise. Most prominent of these, is the camera. I am no fan of handheld video footage at the best of times – I hated it in Blair Witch, in the Season 6 finale of House, and I hate it now – and this movie certainly does nothing to alleviate my reservations. Quite frankly, the film is a mess; a hodgepodge of sequential shots with editing bad enough to make you cringe. The camera’s focus is never quite right; many times, one is literally forced to guess what is happening, which is never something that should happen when we are supposed to be seeing it all first-hand.

The film has some strong potential to be honestly frightening, but it never seems to really reach it. It has some good devices and techniques, but they never pan out into effectiveness. I understand that, in the right scenario, just waiting for something to happen can be even more thrilling than when it actually does, but Paranormal Activity never seems to get it right. I’ve seen some horror films that were indeed effective, such as 1408, perhaps the only horror film ever to elicit anything in me more than disdain. I actually felt for the character, I wanted to see him get out alive, and each time he was thwarted actually pissed me off. At no point in time did I feel any of this attachment to any of the characters in Paranormal Activity.

Maybe I entered the theater with the wrong attitude (I was already set on just laughing the movie off, convinced I wouldn’t be scared or thrilled). Maybe I’ve just been desensitized over time, after years of crappy horror films that really should be placed in a new genre entitled “jump-and-puke-fests”. More likely, though, is that Paranormal Activity simply doesn’t ever achieve what it sets out to do with any credibility or engagingness. As a result, despite being honestly intrigued at the very start of the movie, I soon moved into boredom, and by the end of it, scornful laughter every time some “paranormal activity” happened. For example, wouldn’t you know, judging by its footsteps made in baby powder, that the demon is apparently a T-Rex with a very wide stance?

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