Can't quite capture 'Blair' magic

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2010)

Ten years ago a couple of guys with a camera and a handful of unknown actors turned the cinematic world on its collective ear. They produced a bizarre gem of a thriller for less than $25,000. Ignoring the somewhat questionable marketing of The Blair Witch Project, the cast and crew showed that a hand-held camera could serve as narrator and that CGI, monster costumes, blood, gore, etc., were not absolutely necessary to provoke fright.
That technique in and of itself, however, is no guarantee of producing a legitimately scary film. Owen Peli has followed the same formula in the much-anticipated Paranormal Activity. It is a cross between The Haunting and The Blair Witch Project, we were told for months. Well  the plot, perhaps, is a combination of those two, plus Poltergeist and The Amityville Horror. The quality doesn't quite match most of those others.
Overall, I think Paranormal Activity is OK. Rookies Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat turn in stellar work. However, I don't think PA captures the raw emotion and terror of Blair Witch. Chained to the camera-as-narrator device, meanwhile, it fails to evoke Haunting or Poltergeist-like chills, either.
I almost wonder if a film ABOUT the couple trying to capture the occurrences on camera might not have worked better, such as in Poltergeist. In the Blair Witch type films, there is always an awkward moment where there is danger, yet someone takes time to grab the camera, ignoring the others' remonstrations to put the camera down. Of course, if they didn't grab it, there wouldn't be a film. Therefore the quest of 'realism' actually brings about a LOSS of realism. (Would it have cost much more money to have one stable camera recording the events as the couple makes their own video?) The film has its moments. It does gradually build up tension as events escalate and both endings are creepy. Still, there just isn't enough going on throughout the film to really keep an audience on the edge of its seat. Maybe if it were filmed in a more eerie, Gothic setting, where the house had some history, as well as the girl, it might hold tension better.
The format works, as we have seen, but has its built-in flaws. Blair Witch never seemed to suffer for those flaws. That cannot truthfully be said of Paranormal Activity. Somehow PA misses matching Blair Witch's intensity and frightfulness by half a step.