Heavily hyped and marketed. "Paranormal Activity" has made well over $100 million in the U.S. alone. Not bad for a film that was shot for $11000.
But aside from the novelty that it was made so cheaply, is it any good?
Kinda. The 1st half is a success. The filmmaker, Oren Peli, certainly conforms to the Hitchcokian proverb that "the bang is never frightening, it's the waiting for the bang that is". The film is built around the idea that a couple, played by Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat have something paranormal going on in the house, so Mica wants to get it all on camera. He sets up a camera to watch them sleep and videos his wife around the house.
Things start slow and what's happening is more of a curiosity than anything. Bangs and fans moving, TV coming on. All pretty harmless. But when things heat up and become more dangerous, the film falls apart. It suffers from two major issues.
1) most of the activity happens at night. The bedsheets move, things get thrown around, footsteps. I mean, for god's sake, if all this was happening to you wouldn't you get fifty friends to stand watch while you slept?? Why are they going through all this alone? The screenplay seems to feel this tension, so Katie calls in a parapsychologist. This guy, in five minutes in the house, comes to the conclusion that "the spirit will follow Katie, if you leave the house it will follow you". See, the attempt is to construct one of the pillars of horror films- that you're cut off and all alone. Yet, they're in the middle of San Diego!
On this thinnest of justifications, they stay in the house and call no one else to help. Except for this doctor guy, who they call when all hell has broken loose, with even worse results. The guy walks in the house, turns tail and runs, saying "the spirit is very angry and I need to leave". Pretty pathetic. There would be paranormal people from the entire world coming to this house.
2) The actors and characters they play suck. The guy becomes less and less believable, seemingly more interested in puffing out his chest and saying "you think you're bad, I'm bad". That's a paraphrase, but the dialouge is much the same. It gets so bad you're happy when they get what's coming to them because they get so stupid by the end.
Nevertheless, it's 11k well spent. I don't think this is worth going to a theater for, but it's worth a DVD popcorn night. The tension is considerable. I'm sure the plot and character flaws have been over-looked by the teen crowd that has filled theaters the last couple of months.
Rating:
Presentation : 28 good beginning, slide to worse.
Character: 17 what character, where?
Plot: 25 it's not a bad concept, but has gaping holes
