For those of you who recall feeling nauseous towards the end of "Blair Witch Project"....

Rating: Null/10 (18 October 2009)

....You'll probably feel the same at this movie; maybe not quite as bad since the camera doesn't jump around quite as much. It's a shame since I probably would have "gotten into" both movies more if I hadn't kept feeling like I might have to bolt for the bathroom at any moment. Well, as you've doubtless heard, like "Blair Witch" this is presented as "found footage" but as former President Bush eloquently put it, "Fool me twice... uh... we can't get fooled again." Also like "Blair Witch," there are moments when I thought "Uh, who's supposedly filming this?" but again, it's less obvious here. (If you really want to see a "film within a film" done exquisitely, see "Cannibal Holocaust" or "Man Bites Dog.") Basically it's yet another haunted house story, with a young couple in San Diego (again like "Blair Witch," the actors use their own names) noticing things going escalatedly bump in the night. Other than calling in a psychic who (in a nice twist on convention) proves completely useless, their response to the spooky things happening is to buy a camera to record everything while waiting for more spooky things to happen. Years ago when Eddie Murphy was a stand up comic he had a bit about "The Amityville Horror" and why it couldn't have been about black people, because if the latter had bought a beautiful home and then heard a voice in the walls growling "Get out," their response would have been "Too bad we can't stay!" Mr. Murphy's humor unfortunately has ruined every haunted house flick for me since then: "Why don't they just get the f--- out?" "Paranormal Activity" tries to get around this by suggesting that the ghost/demon/whatever is after the woman personally, so it wouldn't matter if they went somewhere else. It's hard to believe, though, that they wouldn't at least have tried a change of venue. But as someone else posted on IMDb, if I were 18 maybe that wouldn't have bothered me.
I do want to give Oren Peli credit for remembering classic movie wisdom about the power of suggestion. He also seems cinematically unique in recognizing that a steady unedited image (like in a dream) can be a lot more effective than so many movies nowadays that are so frenetically cut that it's impossible even to tell what's happening, let alone be scared by it. The most unnerving bits are of the couple asleep in their bedroom where every night around three a.m. a door will move by itself, a light will go on and off, then a sheet will move as if someone or something is under it. I wondered how they managed to get to sleep every night with all this happening (presumably they watched each video the next day). After the woman is literally dragged out of the bed one night, I thought "That's it, they're outta there" --but no. Sound effects are used very effectively (the demon's arrival is signified by a loud humming). Also the couple in question seems realistic in terms of getting on each other's nerves etc. There's definitely a lot here to like. But little things kept picking away at my "suspension of disbelief"; the Ouija board, the powder on the floor, the broken picture frame all seemed somewhat corny, maybe based mostly on budget restrictions. Some of the sequences didn't really "pay off" for me, particularly when the guy ventured into his trap-door attic (I have the same kind of attic and hate going up there even with no demons around) where I thought maybe something really juicy would be discovered; instead it's just a partially torn/burned photo from the woman's childhood (when she also saw spooky things, then their house burned down). It's impressive, I guess, that a demon would hang on to a souvenir that long (in his invisible demon lair somewhere?) and then plant it in their attic and wait for it to be found--but what if the guy hadn't ventured up there? I suppose the demon would have needed to retrieve the photo from the attic and put it under their pillow or something. Ultimately I can't get around the lack of more initiative from this young energetic couple in terms of response to the threat; as in umpteen previous movies (and presumably more in the future), they have to stay there so they can be victims. (In the recent "Pandorum," by contrast, the heroes had to face the menace because there was literally nowhere else to go.) But "A Plus" for effort from Mr. Peli, I look forward to his future work. No, I don't think he'll be "corrupted" by having more money available. I think too many film fans make too much of a "virtue" of the "necessity" of new directors working with limited funds. If they have the chops, more funds will only enhance their ability to show their chops off....