Unscary nonsense, excruciatingly dull

Rating: 2/10 (31 August 2010)

Wow, where to begin? "Paranormal Activity" is a movie I heard was so scary, so I finally got to watching. What a massive waste of time.
You know the story - a young couple living together have to deal with a "demon" that has been chasing the girl on and off since she was a kid, and now it's making noise in their new home. The guy buys a camera to document the happenings.
This is a ten-minute short stretched out very painfully. For most of the movie, it's established the demon only does stuff at night - so why even have the camera on during the day? So we can watch the clichéd nonsense the couple has to spew out in order to stretch the movie to feature-length time. These sequences are beyond mind-numbing. Watching the couple try to be "natural" is just downright uncomfortable and embarrassing.
When they sleep, however, the camera is set up in its place and we get to see things like the door moving and some lights turning on and off. Now some may say, "What do you want, gore? It's supposed to be subtle." That'd be fine, except the movie, again, is a ten-minute short stretched out to feature-length time. It's beyond dull.
Even way later, when the demon finally does a few things in the daytime, you think things may pick up a little, but no. Not a bit.
A little later, we see the guy get angry because he wants to "take care of the problem" instead of the girl calling in a demon specialist. Where did that come from? Wasn't the idea for the guy to simply document the happenings with the camera for proof? Where was it determined he was actually trying to "take care of the problem?" Was the demon supposed to say, "Oh, they are filming me, I better leave!"? Just another mess in this abysmal movie.
The laughs are good though. Scenes that are supposed to be "scary" are really quite funny. Watching the couple scream and get startled, seeing the girl get dragged out of bed by the demon, and lots of other stuff, it's all pretty hilarious. And the ending, actually, the various endings - all very funny.
Even the obvious ploy to have a busty girl in the movie so the guys watching don't fall asleep fails, as that is no consolation for this bore-fest. The guy reminded me of Jimmy Fallon and since this movie should have been done as a comedy, Fallon would have been perfect for the role. Him, and that busty Rachel girl also from SNL when he was on it, they should have been in this movie.
Now, I can appreciate what may have been attempted - to make a horror movie without the gore, and go for chills - it just fails miserably. Extremely.
If you have absolutely nothing better to do, and want a few laughs, this may be OK to sit through. Just fast forward to the bedroom scenes and get ready to laugh.