Paranormal Activity review

Having sold $7 million in tickets over the weekend despite playing in only 160 theaters, Paranormal Activity is already a huge hit. It's already received a good deal of mythologizing news coverage, and thanks to a grassroots Internet campaign where people cast votes to bring the movie to their city, is probably ingrained enough in the mass consciousness now to get a wide release in the next couple of weeks. Paranormal Activity tells the story of Katie and Micah, a young couple played by two unknown actors named Katie and Micah, who begin video-recording their home life in the hopes of capturing the supernatural events that have been happening to them at night and have seemingly followed Katie around for her entire life. The onscreen action unfolds entirely from the point of view of the couple's camera, and Katie and Micah are the only significant characters who appear onscreen, with the exception of a "ghost expert" who only appears briefly. The film's naturalistic camera work, sound design, and judiciously paced scare moments ramp up the sense of tension throughout, focusing particularly on the characters' growing unease with their surroundings.

Let's stop a minute and acknowledge that the details of Paranormal Activity, from the style right down to the marketing, are extremely reminiscent of 1999's mega-hit The Blair Witch Project. And indeed, I think that your feelings about The Blair Witch Project will probably prove to be the best predictor of how you'll respond to Paranormal Activity, at least in terms of how scary you'll find it to be. I know people who were genuinely frightened by The Blair Witch Project, but to me it came off like an hour and a half of rustling leaf sounds and vaguely spooky stick men capped off with a two-and-a-half second death scene. Similarly, I could tell that a lot of people in the theater watching Paranormal Activity with me (a surprisingly big crowd, given that I went to an 11:15 AM showing) were really scared, but the movie never really rose to that level for me. Even though it builds tension effectively, and has some very creepy moments, I wasn't ever really able to make the mental leap from "door closing unexpectedly" to "abject terror." I think that's more of a reflection of what I find scary than the an indictment of craft on display in Paranormal Activity, and I expect that my opinion of this aspect of the film will be in the minority.

Unlike The Blair Witch Project, however, Paranormal Activity has other virtues beside scare value. First of all, it really nails the intended naturalistic feeling, particularly in the acting. Katie and Micah are among the most believable couples I've seen in a modern film. Katie Featherston's performance is particularly phenomenal, in how her work never feels like she's playing a character in a film. I found myself liking both Katie and Micah quite a bit, which is a positive contrast to how I felt about the main characters in both Blair Witch and Cloverfield. Also, the plot smartly makes the issue of the camera a way of exposing the dynamic between the two main characters; Micah insists on it over Katie's objections and takes a flippantly combative tone toward the haunting that's completely discordant with Katie's emotional turmoil. As the film progresses, their different approaches to the issue increasingly drive a wedge between them.

On a certain level, Paranormal Activity almost plays like an art-house breakup drama with a ghost story in the background. Even thought it's reasonably clear that this was part of the intent, I wish the creators of the film had played up these elements even more. In particular, there's a kinda-foreshadowed plot development in the last five minutes of the film that could have easily been introduced earlier in the third act, which in turn might have opened up more of an arc for Micah's character (I may expand on this more in a post in a couple of weeks once the movie goes wide, so as not to spoil it - watching Paranormal Activity really made me reflect on what I find scary in movies). It's a bit of a nitpicking criticism, but I think that if Paranormal Activity did as good a job of resolving the haunting/relationship trouble parallel as it did setting it up, it'd have a shot at being a real classic. As it stands, it's a very well-crafted horror film that's worth getting excited over. Don't succumb to the coming hype about it being the scariest movie ever made (or the inevitable coming backlash against its overexposure, for that matter) because it isn't. It is, however, a worthwhile movie that's probably best experienced on the big screen with a large audience, and if you think you're interested, I'd suggest that you get together with some friends and go as soon as it opens near you. If nothing else, it'll make for a hell of a fantastic alternative to Saw VI.