Sometimes, The Hype Hurts

Rating: 7/10 (25 October 2009)

I am happy about the success of "Paranormal Activity", a film shot over the course of one week in the director's home with loose change for a budget. I am not, however, happy about all of this discussion of it being the scariest movie of all-time, the scariest movie of the decade, or even the scariest movie of the year. It is genuinely creepy and surprisingly well-made, but it really isn't very scary. As I sat in the theater, absorbed in its story and characters, people around me screamed needlessly and threw their popcorn up in the air. They were not goofing off, but were actually quite frightened. However, because of the enormous amounts of hype surrounding this film, they were expecting to be scared, desperate to be even, and, therefore, were experiencing the exact feelings they wanted to feel. Wisely avoiding reading any reviews or watching any of the promotional material, I enjoyed the film for exactly what it was: a creepy low-budget horror film that was consistently very good, but never quite great.
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