The only scary thing about this movie is the stupidity of its characters ...

Rating: 3/10 (7 February 2010)

... and that of the audience that buys into it.
A little over a decade ago, as Hollywood blockbuster budgets were getting blown out of control, many of us predicted that someone was going to pick up a camcorder and create a blockbuster at a shoe string budget. Shortly afterward, we witnessed a misfire (The Last Broadcast), and a bull's-eye (The Blair Witch Project). The genius of the latter was not only in its simplicity but also its believability. The paranormal connection was left open to debate. It was a clever little film.
Not so with Paranormal Activity which insults its audience's intelligence and apparently manages to get away with it. Roger Ebert's 3.5-star rating of this movie is testament to the old man going senile. Real terror is the result of identifying with characters who make the same decisions that we would under similar circumstances. What can you say about an audience that actually identifies with the endless string of bone-headed and utterly idiotic mis-steps of the two main characters, as well as the contrived and highly questionable plot-moving claims of the "expert", such as "leaving the house will not help at all"? Oh yeah? Then how about calling 911? Or sleeping in another room? Or taking shifts sleeping? Or just staying the hell awake one friggin' night?! Or just going some place where there are a lot of people instead of insisting on being cooped up inside the house? ....
It's been almost four decades since The Exorcist, and this is the state of the sensibilities of the modern moviegoer?
In the distant future portrayed in the film Idiocracy, a blockbuster is a movie called simply "Ass", which consists of 90 minutes of a man's butt making a variety of noises. We are not quite there yet, but seem to be well on the way!