There were real screams in the theater

Rating: 8/10 (11 October 2009)

A "found footage" horror film along the lines of The Blair Witch Project, and the best of its type since Blair Witch. It may be even a tad better than it, though it certainly shares some of its central problems, mostly in that the characters aren't at all interesting. Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat play a couple that has recently moved in together into a large, empty house. Lately, they have been experiencing some strange phenomena, like appliances and faucets turning on by themselves and things moving around on their own. They've also woken to footsteps in the night. Katie has had similar experiences several times in her life before, and is, of course, freaked out that they seem to be starting up again after a long lull. Micah, on the other hand, is excited and comes home one day (as the film opens) with a brand new, super-expensive camera with which he hopes to capture some of the paranormal activity. He sets it up every night in their bedroom and records everything on his laptop. The couple also consults a psychic, who warns against the camera, saying that any attempts to communicate with the possible spirit might make it stronger. Sure enough, the occurrences grow more and more prominent. While the film is fairly predictable, it's great at building tension. Its stroke of genius is that, every night, the film returns to that static shot in the bedroom. It never rushes anything as we silently observe the open door to their bedroom and the darkness behind it, knowing that at some point something weird is going to happen. Every time it returns to that set-up, we know it'll get worse, and ultimately I didn't even want to open my eyes when it arrived back at night. The film is smart never to go over the top, always keeping things very small. Unfortunately, I think its own smallness is going to kill it when more people wander out to see it. Audiences wanting big reveals and in-your-face gore are going to be too dumb to appreciate something like this. I saw it with a great crowd, fortunately. Surprisingly, most of them were teenagers, but they were very respectful. As the film went on, whenever they got to the bedroom sequences the silence was audible. And this was the only movie I think I've ever seen where people actually screamed. Honest to God, there were screams! And then laughter, because it was very funny to hear that in a theater, but that was okay, too.