First movie that has ever physically affected me...

Rating: 10/10 (27 September 2009)

Not only is this gem-of-an-indie-film, 'Paranormal Activity' the scariest movie I have ever seen, it is the most horrifying experience I have ever been a part of.
'Paranormal' begins when a young man purchases a camera to record the paranormal phenomena that his live-in girlfriend has been reporting to have been experiencing. His purchase of the camera is out of naivety, and we soon find out he is more interested in electronics than the strange occurrences that seem to be haunting his partner. As the film progresses, the ghostly happenings become more and more apparent and intensify while the hand-held camera documents them and the terror of the young couple.
The genius, center, heart, and terror of this film lie in the realism of the performances. The actors who portray the couple are so convincing and so natural, you feel as if you are watching an actual homemade video. They do not follow the usual "shaky-cam movie" model of acting in which the performances often try so hard to be "real" that they are over-done and come off as a cheap imitation of as what is assumed would be somebody else's reaction to that scenario. Contrary-wise, we believe as an audience, that "Paranormal"'s characters are true to themselves, and the decisions they make and the things they say are true expressions of how the actors themselves would feel if they had been placed in the same situation. Thus, instead of feeling like you are watching actors in a movie portraying someone else, you feel as if are watching two actual people in an actual haunting scenario. You recognize that everything they say and do would be an actual reaction you could imagine yourself giving in response to that scenario. This produces an extremely uneasy effect in which you cannot escape out of their terror-filled world because you feel, yourself, that you are in it. There-in lies the key to this brilliant film.
The other key is the agonizing, yet wonderful uses of suspense and the imagination. The director does not assume his audience is a dull, thoughtless bunch, dependant on gore, sex, and explosions to be thrilled. Rather, in true Hitchcockian fashion, he fully utilizes the concept that imagining the "man with the axe" is far more terrifying than seeing the "man with the axe." We are forced to constantly think about what we just experienced. In some cases, blink, and you will miss something. Subliminal shocks are everywhere, so not only are your conscious senses attacked, your psyche is brutally terrorized. This makes, in one instance, viewing a completely empty room in dead silence for 30 seconds or more turn out to be one of the most horrifying scenes in the entire film. If you think about, just seeing an empty, silent room does not seem scary at all, but there-in lies the genius of this film: That something that simple can scare you down to the deepest core of emotion.
If you've read any of the other reviews for 'Paranormal Activity', you will notice almost all of them mention that a viewer will not be able to sleep after watching it. I will make my review one of them. You will not sleep if you see this movie. Not only is it terrifying, it's thought-provoking. Then when you think about it, you are terrified all over again. Don't believe me? Go ahead, watch it. I dare you.