On the right track, but way to boring.

Rating: 3/10 (24 October 2009)

Although I was skeptical going into the theatre, I will admit that some parts were truly frightening. I understand the the idea that the "boring" parts are there to lull the audience into a comfort zone before inducing heart attacks when the scary stuff goes down. The problem was that this intermediate fluff comprised far too high a proportion of the total film. After a few minutes of building suspense, scary stuff should have happened. Instead, the scary stuff happened when I was already bored to the point of no return. There were only a few scenes that were extremely scary, but they were nowhere near sufficient to even consider the possibility that this is the scariest movie of all time. There was a much more horrifying scene in the recent remake of The Omen, where a mask-wearing Damien haunts the girl in the bathtub (I think while she is asleep). M. Night Shyamalan has a knack for this hard-to-describe type of horror; scenes in which not much happens but that manage to cause heart-wrenching panic in the audience. Paranormal Activity fails to accomplish this until the very end of the movie, and only barely.