"Found Footage" Scares Heck Out of Audience

Rating: 7/10 (24 October 2010)

(Originally appeared in Free Times, Columbia's Entertainment Guide)
"Scary" doesn't have to be expensive, as proved by maverick filmmakers like George Romero (Night of the Living Dead), Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and Wes Craven (The Last House on the Left). Their groundbreaking early films could not have been done within the confines of Hollywood. There's always too many associate producers, marketing flaks, accountants, lawyers and publicists deciding how you should make your film, so the key is to spend the least amount of money possible and not attract their attention.
Still, I couldn't have imagined a viable film made for $11,000.00 (which wouldn't buy you five minutes' production time on a Hollywood feature), but that's reportedly the budget of Paranormal Activity, which makes possibly the best use yet of the "found footage" gimmick first seen in The Blair Witch Project. It wouldn't be entirely inaccurate to describe Paranormal Activity as Blair Witch in somebody's house instead of in the forest.
Those somebodies are Katie and Micah, who are convinced there's a presence in their home that turns on/off lights and faucets, et cetera. The skeptical Micah sets up his video camera on a tripod to catch this nocturnal activity (or to prove Katie wrong) while he and Katie are sleeping. What we see are Micah's homemade videos, graciously "donated" by his and Katie's families after the camera was "found." There's not a single moment when you doubt the authenticity of what you're seeing. There's no musical score, no fancy camera work, no slumming guest stars ("Oh, look -- It's Woody Harrelson!") to remind you that it's just a movie, not even any credits. There's just the relentless tension of knowing that, if humans were ever going to meet the unknown face to face, there wouldn't be any vampires, werewolves or zombies. It'd be like this.
There's actually nothing in Paranormal Activity that you haven't seen before and probably seen much more explicitly, if not read in books, a thousand times. I'll bet you even know someone who claims to have had these experiences; I've known several, and while I hesitate to doubt the veracity (if not the sanity) of these friends, I can't accept that our entire science can be so wrong. But if it is, then Paranormal Activity, because of its complete lack of artificiality, may be the best cinematic representation yet of that wrongness.
But the best thing isn't that the film may be scary or that it feels authentic. It's the fact that, despite ostensibly being shot on someone's home moviecam, Paranormal Activity is highly and impeccably structured, tighter than most A-list movies with a $200 million budget. Not a frame is gratuitous or wasteful. Ditto for the flawless Katie and Micah.
Put this movie at the top of your Halloween list. My only regret is that I've already seen it...although it might be fun to sit through again with people who haven't.