What you can't see is always scarier than what you can

Rating: 10/10 (13 January 2010)

In his review of "The Blair Witch Project," Roger Ebert said, "The noise in the dark is almost always scarier than what makes the noise in the dark." Indeed, that film terrified audiences 11 years ago by exploiting that fact. Now, Oren Peli has taken the same concept, and made a similar horror flick. And "Paranormal Activity" is a hell of a lot scarier.
Katie and Micah are two roommates who are witnessing some strange occurrences in their home. They decide to buy a video camera to record these occurrences, and that's when the film begins.
Plot is of little matter here. Neither are special effects. The camera is hand-held, but usually it is on a stand or resting (thank God). The actors are very real, which is the point. It doesn't take long before we believe that this is actual footage.
The construction of the film is genius. The occurrences are what in other contexts would be normal sounds, but without a visible source, they become frightening. But what really gets us is that many times we are unsure that anything happened at all. Oren Peli is a genius for making this all work so well. One could divide the film in three parts: slow, creepy then downright scary.
It's not perfect (the beginning isn't very effective, and initially the possible explanations seem downright silly, although once the film gets going, that all changes). However I'm giving it a 10 because it actually scares the hell out of us extremely well, and the tension builds to an ultimate crescendo. And the climax (the original...the alternate ending is pretty weak) is downright terrifying.
This is one film that goes beyond thrills and crosses the line into utter fear.