Boring But Authentic

Rating: 7/10 (19 January 2019)

1 March 2010. Reality television meet horror acting. Reality is boring and the difficulty with making a film about boring reality is to keep in interesting enough that people actually watch it. What is likely even more difficult is to recreate boring reality and horror at the same time as an authentic performance. Never truly scary, uncomfortably boring but fascinating at the same time, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY seems to present one of the most authentic performances of horror on film. Unlike CLOVERFIELD (2008) that appeared to have been released in 2008 after PARANORMAL ACTIVITY but before ACTIVITY'S widescreen debut in 2009, PARANORMAL activity is genuinely almost completely more consistent in its approach to authenticity with strong elements from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999) which remains more completely and eerily scary. Whether or not PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is an excellent horror film depends on the beholder and the riveting reality of it is where it presents its strongest case. Unfortunately, as a full feature film it remains boring, unscary, and mostly interesting in how it really seems to reflect what actually goes on behind the scenes in a relationship - a great pseudo-documentary reporting.