Sunday, October 11, 2009

Paranormal Activity

Well, I finally got to the theaters, and the movie I saw was the little movie with big aspirations, Paranormal Activity.

The movie Paranormal Activity didn't disappoint me as much as I would have expected. When you consider the state of horror these days, they could have done much worse. I'd like to go over some of the background of this film before going into the movie itself, because it's almost more interesting than the movie itself. The film is as independent as you can get. The actors and 3 crew members filmed over 7 days in the directors house in 2007. The movie's budget was about the cost of a brand new car. *Brother... take some pointers for the future.* Spielberg came across the film in 2008, and was so impressed he negotiated for the film to be remade by the director. The director, Oren Peli convinced him that the film be screened and ell, the screening was such a hit that the remake was scrapped and the original made it onto Paramount's release slate. That's simply amazing!

Now onto the movie. Paranormal Activity is about Katie and Micah, twenty-somethings who are trying to track down exactly what is haunting them. The movie is entirely shot using the camera that Micah purchased as part of the film. This camera is carried around by the two characters and is left on a tripod in their bedroom while they sleep.

The acting was believable, and surprisingly so since the two leads apparently were amateurs. Micah is a huge idiot, consistently making things worse by introducing a quija board, telling Katie not to call the exorcist, and overall being a pretty big douche to her feelings about the video equipment he has set up.

What really got me was the ambient noise. The creepy, low pitched sound that frequented the film and the paranormal activity really struck me as disturbing, and triggered *something* in me that bothered me to the core.

On a side note when I turned on my phone upon leaving the theater it claimed it was October 6th, 5:11 am. Creepy.

I'm probably more impressed with this film because it was a low-budget, independent film that was produced outside of Hollywood. The movie is not the best horror film made ever, or even in recent years (though as a "horror" film it's better than probably anything since The Descent), but is worthy of probably the best horror film this year. A remake just probably wouldn't have captured the same feeling that came from this production. I may have more to say about this in a follow up tomorrow, but at the moment, I'd suggest seeing the film!

*** 1/2 out of *****

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