A bad, over-hyped horror film

Rating: 2/10 (2 December 2009)

Paranormal Activity is one of the surprise hits of 2009, and the highest grossing in history. From a $15,000 budget it has so far made over $100 Million. It is a simple horror film about demonic haunting, using a hand held camera style like in The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield.
The film is told retrocepticly, with the action taking place in 2006 in San Diego. It tells the story of Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston), a young couple who had been together for 3 years. Katie had has some sort of demonic spirit ever since she was 8-years-old. Micah plans on filming the nightly events. Katie is desperate to get rid of the spirit and asks a psychic (Mark Fredrichs) to help. He suggests the being is a demon and advices to call a specialist, and tells Micah not to try and communicate with the being. Micah ignores the advice and sets out to do his own experiments and research. Things start off small, like the door moving in the middle of the night and strange sounds. But slowly things get worst, with Katie sleepwalking and the demon getting more annoyed. It affects Katie and Micah's relationship and it starts to break down.
A lot of reviews suggests that this is meant to be one of the most scary films ever made. Sadly it isn't. There is no real threat, and for the most part the demon just seemed like a minor nuisance. They should have shown more of a threat, like the demon hurting Katie, or Katie turning to self-harm or harming Micah in her sleep. There could have shown things like a message being written in blood or as my brother suggests, showing the demon beliefly in the mirror. It's only the very last scene that is worth seeing and prevents me from giving this film a lower score. Many scenes and themes have been copied from other films: style wises it copies Blair Witch Product (awful) and Cloverfield (great), Signs (both ideas and scenes), The Ring, and films like The Exorcist and the Omen. A horror film can pain homage to other films, but its own ideas, themes and scares should stand on it's own film. Many of the scenes were too conventional and most of the scenes were more funny then scary. So was some of the interplay between Micah and Katie, but there relationship felt more natural and down to earth. They were pretty good actors. When I was in the cinema there was only one person who seemed scared during the film and audience actually laughed when she first screamed. For a fairly short feature film, it actually went very slowly. For the most part not much happens. What should have happened was the first 30 minutes should have been used to get to know the characters, and then slowly build up the tension and the threat in it's own internal universe.
A problem filled film, but does have a decent last scene. But I know there is going to be a sequel.