Paradoxical paranormal chiller

Rating: 9/10 (28 October 2009)

Paranormal Activity (PA) is a rare anomaly, the extremely small budget indie flick (15,000$, the price of a car) filmed in one week with one hand-held camera and unknown actors that ends up being very popular. Many will compare it to the 1999's Blair Witch Project, which is not a bad comparison but it's different in the fact it takes place in one location (a suburban home) and that I found it much better and especially scarier. I've seen lots of horror movies and I've grown rather blasé and hard to please. PA actually gave me chills and I don't think it was because of the air conditioning. It slowly instilled dread and shocked me a few times. The story alternates between daytime sequences in the house and nighttime sequences with one night-vision equipped camera stuck in the corner of the bedroom. I quite suspect many people will find the day sections boring and banal but without them the night sections wouldn't be so suspenseful. It's the art of creating tension, releasing it and recreating it again. If you have constant tension, then people get used to it and it's not as effective.
So although it starts rather tame with nothing or little happening, I was soon dreading the nights and hoping for them to end quickly. The day-night routine cycle is one of the secrets why PA is so effective as well as the unnerving low-frequency bass noise used sparingly instead of a standard soundtrack. This is not special-effects oriented nor does it have professional cinematography. It looks amateurish and intentionally so. It relies on the Hitchcock philosophy that it's scarier to hear, glimpse and imagine than to see everything. I think it also works because most of the eerie stuff could easily happen in our homes. It's those strengths that will appear as weaknesses to jaded audiences. We can also expect the usual backlash seen with highly hyped surprise hits. You go in expecting one of the scariest movies of all time and you prepare yourself unconsciously for this so in the end you can brag that it wasn't that scary.
Fright is subjective. For what it's worth, I'm not easily scared but I have no choice but to admit I became emotionally involved. If you're interested in seeing PA, then try to go in open-minded and preferably with someone else in a crowded theater. You run the high risk of having to deal with noisy undisciplined groups of teens (as I did) but hopefully the rest of the public will eventually placate them or the scariness eventually will. Rarely have I seen a movie-going public being so scared and tense, and not because of gore (none here). Seeing this in a crowd is a great experience if you're lucky enough but on the other hand, I can see PA being quite effective late at night at home with a significant other with the added benefit of not having the first part of the movie ruined by hecklers. Actually, although I rate this movie highly, I'm not sure I should recommend it because it's insidious. It does tend to get under your skin, linger in your thoughts afterwards, particularly before you sleep perhaps provoking insomnia and nightmares and it could make certain normal house occurrences much creepier. Avoid this film if you live alone and in a creaky/drafty home.
Rating: 9 out of 10
P.S.: I quite suspect this would be a great date movie. It would favor closeness during the show and your date (or yourself) might not want to sleep alone afterwards. ;-)