Disregard the Hype

Rating: 3/10 (21 September 2010)

Paranormal Activity is a film about... well, it's really all in the name. It's about a young couple who are trouble by some strange and disturbing phenomena and decide to video-tape their experiences. The film is shot in a style similar to Blair Witch. To Paranormal Activity's credit, it's less annoying to watch than that film because there's much less running around in the dark with constant screaming. The film benefits from a more subdued pace, which results in fairly well developed characters and a fairly complete exploration of the plot. The acting and scripting both feel very natural, lending a little bit of credence to the film's set up as essentially found footage.
That may all seem like not-insignificant praise, but the truth is I really didn't enjoy this film. I was going in expecting to be scared. That's the reputation the film has - as one of the scariest films of all time. But I simply couldn't buy into it. The film spends a lot of time with not much happening. This isn't uncommon for horror films, and in fact I tend to prefer films in the genre that spend some time building up suspense or a feeling of dread. But Paranormal Activity doesn't do that. It builds on character (generally in fairly superficial ways) and on a plot that, while well-developed is simply not that interesting, but neglects to build any kind of real sense of suspense that would add impact when things really do get strange.
The end result was that I was bored for most of the film. The characters are well-developed, but they're also kind of boring, and not enough to carry the film. When there is actually something paranormal happening, there are basically two extremes shown in the film. There are events which are so benign as to be... yes, a little odd, but not really terrifying or troubling beyond that. And there are events that are fairly over-the-top and just ridiculous. The film goes to great lengths to set up a realistic atmosphere, presumably so that you'll accept the more outlandish events, but it had the opposite effect for me - the movie spent so much time building up a certain atmosphere, that when I saw those scenes, it had the effect of destroying any sense of immersion I may have had. They simply didn't fit. There was not one good scare in this movie as far as I'm concerned, and it failed to create much psychological horror or dread. As I said, I was bored for most of it.
There are aspects of this movie that aren't terrible. If you liked The Blair Witch Project, you might well enjoy Paranormal Activity - I think it's a markedly better film in the same style. It's still not very good, though. In fact, in this man's opinion, Paranormal Activity is a pretty lackluster film indeed. Avoid.