Preys on primal fears

Rating: 9/10 (17 October 2009)

Is Paranormal Activity really that good? Is it worth all the hype? It achieves its goal and then some. That's enough to say it's at least worth a watch. I don't know if the acting is great, and neither of the leads are what we would categorize as glamorous. But does any of that really matter. This film is scary, and let me tell you why.
Horror films come by a formula now. To me there are rules that are followed that work really well. The Hitchock idea of suspense - that we already know something terrible will happen. He builds it up - and then doesn't show us the act. So we've built this horrifying vision in our head. In Psycho, we see the knife, but not the act. We're then afraid of showers.
Then there's another formula for horror that works. Isolation. This was mastered by George Romero. He imprisons his characters - be it in an old house or a shopping mall. That there's really nowhere to go keeps our characters hopeless. Again, we're waiting for the inevitable. It's the how that's got us spooked.
So why spend a review talking about other films? Because Paranormal Activity successfully combines these two elements and ups the ante. In the Hitchock sense, the film begins with a title card thanking the families of the main characters, alluding to something horrible that has happened to them. We're just waiting to learn how. In a classic Hitchcock way, suspense is built. We never see what is actually causing the said activity, and the most horrifying things don't happen on screen. So we're left to imagine how horrible it is.
Then there's the Romero element of isolation. This is where the film takes two clever turns. For one, it sets a rule for itself, that the characters might as well stay in their house because it doesn't matter where they are. That gives the director no reason to shift the characters elsewhere. So he keeps them in a place that by audience standards is the safest place in the world: their room. The scene of the camera videotaping the characters as they sleep as they hear things go bump in the night is horrifying because it preys on a primal fear of ours. We relate to this, and that the image is repeated, it keeps the audience on edge. This is the most terrifying form of isolation imagined, robbing us of our one safe haven. That's why the film is so scary.
The interesting thing about this film is that you can't look at the traditional elements of film alone (ie screenplay, direction, acting). Is it gimmicky? A little. There's the sense that it looks real. But I don't point to the documentary feel. I think it's just that the director didn't need to come up with anything new to scare us. He just took those things that go bump in the night and put into a movie - which hopefully survives the hype that has surrounded it.