Heavenly Hype, Earthbound Execution

Rating: 6/10 (1 August 2010)

Now that the considerable hullabaloo has died down around this flick, I figured this was the perfect time to finally see it. Like its predecessor, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, the bombastic campaign that was used to roll this movie out was a marvel of hyperbole that the late, great schlockmeister showman William Castle would've loved. He had the P.T. Barnum-method of selling movies almost down to a science, understanding instinctively that as long as you have a gimmick and great pitch-line to sell it with, what did it matter if the film was crap?
And the producers of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, along with writer/director Oren Peli have done absolutely NOTHING to prove him wrong. The film itself is neither as horrible as some people have made it out to be, nor is it "THE MOST TERRIFYING MOVIE EVER MADE." There are much better films made with even lower budgets that can rightfully lay claim to that title.
But in Peli's defense, even though the premise is nothing new, (think of this as a much more 'up-close-and-personal' version of an episode of the Discovery Channel series A HAUNTING), he does err on the side of subtlety and understatement in the movie's more effective moments, where any other director would've opted for a maelstrom of CG effects and a thunderous soundtrack to beat the audience into the desired response. The greatest problem lies in the moments in-between the supernatural incidents, when the characters' responses to the extraordinary circumstances can leave you scratching your head in wonderment and more than a little skepticism.
Katie (Katie Featherston) and Micah (Micah Sloat - and that's pronounced "MEE-kah" and not "MYE-kah", BTW) are experiencing some strange occurrences in their house as the film begins. Micah, a baby of the "techno-generation" through and through, has bought an expensive camera along with all the latest trimmings to try and capture these incidents, and couldn't be happier about getting to play with his new toys. Katie, on the other hand, couldn't be less enthusiastic, or more put out about Micah's connecting more with his gadgets and less with her sense of growing unease and distress. See, this is not her first time at this particular rodeo. Seems that there's an eerie history of this whole "things-that-go-BUMP- in-the-night" problem in her family background, and though little things have happened that reflected this in their nearly three-year relationship, the incidents have never been as bad as they've gotten when we meet them. And of course, things are about to go from bad to a whole lot worse.
As I mentioned before, the problem is not with the sequences where "things" happen...doors move, bangs and creaks emerge from the walls at unexpected times, objects in the house get moved to places where they weren't before, amongst other things. The biggest obstacle is in the way the characters are written as a couple. Katie fares a lot better than Micah on the sympathy front - she doesn't understand how or why the phenomenon has followed her for so long, and just wants to find a way to stop it or at the very least, make it all go away. Micah, on the other hand, is just about completely oblivious to the glaring fact that he's facing forces that can't be taken care of by simply yelling them down or pointing a night-vision lens at them. As much as my dislike for his character grew by leaps and bounds, Micah Sloat the actor did a great job in capturing the self-centeredness and immaturity.
I won't go into the complete "WTF" moments that take the audience out of the spell of genuine terror the movie is attempting to weave, but you'll know them for sure when you see them. And by the time it reaches what is pretty much the expected denouement, you might be left feeling the sentiment expressed in the old Peggy Lee song: "Is That All There Is?"
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY gamely tries to apply classic tropes of otherworldly tales of spookery to our very post-modern, gadget-obsessed world, but for this viewer, it ultimately misses the mark. For egg-sized goosebumps, at least for my taste, you still can't beat classic films like the original version of THE HAUNTING or even THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE.