As Someone Who Actually Liked The Later Entries...

Rating: 2/10 (19 May 2015)

The odd thing about this review is that believe it or not, I actually LOVED the later installments of the Paranormal Activity franchise (4 and Marked Ones) Contrary to popular opinion and belief, I think these movies get slowly better and better with each film, correcting the errors of the previous films and learning and evolving with time. That being said...The first Paranormal Activity is an extremely dull, insipid and unscary film that occasionally borders on unintentional comedy.
Look, I love found footage movies when done well. They're among the few horror movies that can legitimately scare me, and movies like The Blair Witch Project, (REC), Unfriended, The Bucks County Massacre and Afflicted are among my favorite films of all time. The difference between those movies and the first Paranormal Activity are that those films are tense and exciting, and know how to create an effective sense of dread. The first Paranormal Activity has none of that. The ghost here does extremely little, and what little it does is hardly "supernatural." Most of it just borders on the verge of "slightly unusual."
It doesn't help that the acting is among the worst I've ever seen in a horror movie. For a found footage movie, where the realism and the ability to make you believe you're watching real life horror are perhaps the most important qualities, this is a death sentence. Katie and Micah overact and underact, and not once did I feel like I was watching real people react to real supernatural horrors. Katie Featherstone in particular delivers a truly Razzie worthy performance, never seeming to react to anything like a normal human would.
This brings me to the film's most fatal flaw; the key to a good and scary ghost movie or story is to make the ghost actually threatening and dangerous. This is something that movies like Grave Encounters, Unfriended and The Blair Witch Project understand. Again, the first Paranormal Activity does not. The ghost doesn't hurt the two protagonists and it doesn't do enough strange or unexplainable things to psychologically torture them (Unless you are the kind of person who is traumatized by a slight breeze moving a door, then this movie may shock you to your core) If a ghost isn't a major threat to the protagonists, and it doesn't do anything particularly malevolent or antagonistic, where am I supposed to be scared of it? When the ghost actually DOES do remotely threatening or unexplainable things, the pathetic acting completely kills any horror that the audience might have experienced otherwise. The chief example would most likely be the demon screeching scene, which could and would have been terrifying if delivered by people who could actually...You know...Act and react like real people.
The ending to this movie is so bad and so unintentionally funny, it seems like something out of a parody of a found footage horror movie rather than a real found footage horror flick. It tries SO hard to scare you with Micah's hilariously over-the-top and abrupt death scene and an INCREDIBLY forced final jump scare from a possessed Katie, I just can't help but laugh. Whether it was genuinely funny or I was just laughing in contempt at this pathetic excuse for a horror film is something I may never know.
I understand this movie has a VERY big fanbase, and I respect their opinion. Hell, I'll even admit to LOVING some of the sequels. But as hard as I try (And I tried HARD), I can't bring myself to love this one. It's just a terrible, terrible horror movie and a crappy start to an admittedly decent horror franchise.