Voyeuristic sentries

Rating: 7/10 (1 November 2009)

It's the open doorway that keeps you on edge. That's where our eyes are trained. Something in the house is making those booming noises, and the anticipation of its source materializing within the black rectangle fuels our fear, because the "mis-en-scene" feels spontaneous. There's no music cue to brace us for any imminent surprises. Micah, the daytrader who moonlights as a naive art-house filmmaker, employs the long take to good effect, which allows you to search the frame for paranormal activity without the didacticism of camera angles and editing. The scares aren't canned; the scares are fresh, generated from a build-up of long-simmering dread. The scares are based on observation, not cheaply earned through flash cuts, which only startle the moviegoer. The objective distance between the camera and the bed that contains the sleeping couple is deceptively artless. The camera isn't looking for the demon, you are: the camera is passive, forcing the moviegoer into a more pro-active mode. "Paranormal Activity" makes you a ghostbuster among ghostbusters, in which the camera is subjugated, transformed into a corroborator to the sentry, that is you, who looks over this woman, and to a lesser degree, this man. From the open doorway, the hall running north to south can be glimpsed, and the stairwell that connects to it. The moviegoer measures the proximity of the potential demon traversing the hallway to the couple's room towards the camera, and realizes how vulnerable Katie seems, especially since Micah is sleeping on the wrong side of the bed, the side closest to the doorway to her left, as if she's protecting him. Even worse than the prospect of a malevolent presence methodically approaching the bedroom from the farthest reaches of the entrance/exit, that malevolent presence could manifest itself without warning from the hallway parallel to their room, revealing itself where the wall gives way to the threshold of their sleeping chamber without a musical soundtrack to orientate the moviegoer of the transition between the build-up and the reveal. Unlike other horror movies, we're not told in advance of what is, hypothetically, supposed to terrify us.
The moviegoer never sees anything bodily enter the room, but there are the footprints, captured in posterity by the baby powder that Micah deposits on the floor. It changes the rules: the demon can get to Katie without detection. Katie's sleepwalking, and her dramatic snake-like slither off from her bed, jolts us, because the doorway serves not only as an entrance, but as an exit, as well. The moviegoer is rendered powerless, and maybe, unconsciously, a little guilty too, since the film surreptitiously makes us responsible for Katie's safety(the demon was in the room and we missed it), even though we know that the events on the tape had already transpired. Such is the faculties of digital video to project a present tense ambiance. We're the last line of defense; we're doing Micah's job. By all appearances, the amateur filmmaker uses his girlfriend as a human shield against otherworldly harm. Katie's safety becomes secondary to, in Micah's own words, "good stuff". At the time of its creation, the "found tape" that would become "Paranormal Activity", was never a formal film, but nevertheless, Micah puts Katie through some compromising positions that violates the pact between a filmmaker and his actor, none more so than the moment he employs the ouija board to draw the demon out. "Paranormal Activity" gets to the essence of the exploitation film. Micah creates a setting where the girl is put in jeopardy, and somewhat dispassionately records her suffering, because he never takes the matter of the demon seriously enough. Like genre film itself, horror especially, the filmmaker and the audience are having fun.
But what about Katie? Well...see for yourself, what her feelings are on Micah's machinations to drum up action for his home video.