Over-hyped overly-macho dizzy nonsense

Rating: 2/10 (2 November 2009)

When it comes to riding coattails, this flick has got it in the bag. Cashing in on the popularity of The Blair Witch Project and its army of clones, Paranormal Activity attempts suspense with a camera technique I'd like to call "I paid $10 to see a movie that looks like it was shot by a $50 camera attached to a run-away washer" Plot-wise, the movie reminds me of being eight years old at a slumber party and telling creepy stories about white vans and ancient demons to friends to see who would get more freaked out. Being a big girl now, this genre fails to inspire any sort of fear unless it introduces something new. This movie doesn't.
The scariest part of the movie, aside from the unnecessary motion sickness, was how much of an unsympathetic idiot Katie's live-in boyfriend is. She tells him to stop doing something, he does it anyway. She pleads with him to do things her way, and he blows her off. She tells him to turn off the camera, he keeps it on. He even tries to keep it on while they have sex. Ahoy abusive relationship! Katie quickly figures out, however, that a demon that has been haunting her for years is angered by a dude stepping in on his territory. Because, ya know, women are totally the property of whatever scary antagonist is out there or a dude. Match-up: Demon From Hell versus Misogynistic Boyfriend. Who will win the ownership of the damsel? Very original. My third favorite part is when Micah gets mad at the demon and starts yelling about "his house/ girlfriend" and how he's "going to take care of it". Yeah dude, you're going kick the butt of something that doesn't have a corporeal form. Good luck with that.
Thus, every ineffectual stupid thing that Micah does angers the demon more. Katie doesn't want him to do it, he does it anyways, the demon gets angry and does more crazy, but not scary, things when they sleep. There, I just ruined the plot of the whole movie. You're welcome.
Coming in a close second for my favorite scene is when Micah gets mad again—are you sensing a theme yet?—at Katie because she tells him that she's really mad at him for getting an Ouiji board, after he promised not to, and tells her to "go upstairs and hang out with her demon boyfriend". Silly women, they should just go upstairs and hang with the demon that wants to kill them, if they're going to be uppity like that and think that they know better about how to deal with the something they've been dealing with most of their lives.
In the next scene, Micah is holding Katie on the floor of the upstairs hall while she cries and tells him she's sorry. He replies, "it's not your fault". Which, funny enough, it isn't. It's his. What the demon did, before Micah got his camera, against her wishes, and put powder on the floor to track its footprints, against her wishes, and trying to contact it with an Ouiji board, against her wishes, is nothing compared to what it does now. Micah evidently thinks that his pride and chest-beating he-man antics are more important than not angering the thing that you can't hurt but has really evil intentions towards someone you supposedly love. I told you this guy is an intellectual champ.
Instead of this being a good indication that Micah really ought to listen to his girlfriend and stop doing stupid stuff, he gets it into his head that's it's a good idea for him and Katie to leave the house. Micah won't listen to the people who tell him not to, because he's smarter than everyone.
And here comes my favorite part of the movie: the end. Micah finally shuts up. Yep, the Demon From Hell figures that Micah has stepped in on his territory for the last time. As they sleep, it possesses Katie, walks her down the hall, down the stairs, and makes her scream for her boyfriend.
Micah, like a champ, wakes from a dead sleep with a woody at the idea of saving his damsel, vaults over the bed, and runs down the stairs. There's a bunch of screaming, and then silence. Then, in the only part of the movie that made me jump, something is thrown at the camera, knocking it off the tripod.
That something is Micah's lifeless body. Finally! I felt relief more than fear. Katie stands over him, makes a creepy face, and this farce of a movie comes to a close.
So I leave the theater, enjoying the cold night air and letting the motion sickness fade. Just for an idea of how dumb the plot was, I spent at least 80% of the movie with my eyes closed trying not to throw up, and an additional 10% outside the theater and I didn't miss a thing.
But what really killed me, and just hit home how much I dislike this movie, is that the most discussed thing in the movie's forums here was not the horrible camera angles. It wasn't how stupid Micah is.
Nope, it was how "fat" the actress who played Katie was. Yep, the woman who walked around in barely-there pajamas for most of the movie, with nary a love handle or Buddha belly in sight, is a whale. She's just such an offense against the standards of grunting mini misogynists that the entire board is buzzing about what a fatty she is.
Moral of the story: you can attach a cheap camera to a washer. You can make your secondary character an annoying macho idiot. You can cash in on the popular genre of "hurting women for fun". You can forget to include a plot.
But all that anyone will notice is that the actress isn't a size 0.