what scares us all is what we can't see...

Rating: 8/10 (16 October 2009)

Paranormal Activity arrives to us in the multiplexes already becoming a hit. And how easy it is: its budget was ten grand, looks like it was shot for ten percent of that, and made a profit in just the first night of its limited-run midnight screenings across the country. Now as a bonafide hit (if not yet the Blair Witch sized phenomenon, though it's on its way to be just that), it comes as something one may be a little curious about at first but not entirely sure. Does it live up to the gargantuan hype? That depends on what you've heard: some adore the movie, have been scared s***less by it, and others, frankly, laughed at the end. But what it is is an effective ghost story put to film, taking with it the same 'it's not there but is it' film-making approach that made the original Val Lewton Cat People so scary.
Seeing it in a packed audience has its ups and downs. The big up is that the audience, if properly primed or the right crowd (i.e. young people), will react to it like a ride in the guise of an minimalist exercise in suspense and tension. The big down is that... you're seeing a movie with a huge obnoxious crows that can't shut up or put away the cell phones. But those who want to be attentive to the movie do get rewards. Paranormal Activity provides its audience a "this is happening" style movie. It's not in the same this-is-how-we-found-the-footage editing of Blair Witch or Cloverfield. It's more like a collection of clips and scenes that do add up, where Micah and Katie are living in a house and are (to put it nicely) bothered by a demonic spirit of some kind.
Where it came from, why its hounded Katie for so long, why it hasn't taken her or done more damage over the years, are questions (if not entirely logical gaps) that will come to the viewer. One may even wonder, until its answered for us, why the couple just doesn't leave the house and get away from the spirit. What makes it work as a movie utmost is that it's a fresh take on familiar subject matter. We've seen stories of a possessed house, we've seen movies with possessed people, but not in a style that calls to mind Andy Warhol's film of a non-stop movie of a person sleeping on a bed for six hours straight. Paranormal Activity isn't as arty as that, but it does provide the same frame of reference: every night, it would seem, that the camera records in that same spot the tri-pod is on, things happen of a disturbing sort, from creaks in the night to lights turned on/off, to shadows, and finally slammed doors and bodies pulled out and bitten.
The acting, for this kind of docu-horror movie, is pretty good if not always great or totally believable, and the set-up of the characters early in the film makes them sympathetic, simple middle-class characters. The director puts the audience in their shoes- or more-so Micah's shoes as someone who looks at this whole ghost/demon event night by night half-jokingly- and then lets it rip for what we don't see to be far more terrifying than showing anything (albeit the final shot of the movie is a true stunner, oddly enough it being Spielberg-inspired since it's a call back to Jaws by the way the audience reacted). Filling in the blanks and things-in-the-dark-what-the-hell-was-that scenes make up some of the best moments in horror movies, and first time director Oren Peli milks this style for all its worth. At its best, it's on par (or better) than Blair Witch.
If nothing else, while not a perfect movie, I would hope that its chances at the box office top the upcoming fecal money-shot of Saw VI. I don't know how much either will make, but it would be nice if real horror and real scares won over torture porn with audiences again. A-