The Rare Quality of Quiet and Anticipation, Even Nothing Going On.

Rating: 8/10 (30 April 2010)

Paranormal Activity is a cunning little horror film, so well made it's authentically creepy, that comes insisting it's the real thing. Without any sort of traditional opening or closing credits, it opens by thanking the families of the two central characters and closes with one of those Current Whereabouts Unknown title cards and a screen of copyright notices. This was ostensibly a film made without a director, a writer, a producer, sound, catering, grips, makeup orwell no it does have a cameraman. All of the footage is shown like it had been found afterward.
As in Blair Witch, Rec, Quarantine, Cloverfield, et al, the plot gimmick is that one of the two characters recorded it himself. There isn't a single shot that defies that premise, even if certain ones appear practically unfeasible without other hands on the camera, but I may be wrong. A grad student and a day trader who've been together three years have now moved into a house in San Diego that doesn't look much occupied. It's well enough decorated, yet everything seems recent and there's no untidiness. Micah meets Katie out front one day by filming her on his new video camera, which she finds bulkier than his other one.
They've been disturbed by auspices of some kind of ghostly goings-on in an upstairs bedroom. Micah's brilliant spark is to film in the house, leaving the camera rolling as a quiet watchman while they sleep. Like any man with a new toy, he grows consumed in this idea, the bottom line, for him, isn't Katie's despair but his movie. After one significant shock, she asks him doubtingly if he indeed went back to pick up his camera. One advantage of the plot gimmick is that for extended stretches of time the camera is apparently left on with no one running it. It's on a tripod at the end of their bed while they sleep, and we watch occurrences while they're sound asleep. Some of these things are considerably minute, and I won't outline any of them. The basis that they occur anyhow is the key. That they appear to occur by themselves, observed by a fixed camera, makes them scary, particularly because there are some shots that look beyond the bounds of possibility without special effects, and there's no discernible sign of any, looking as carefully as one can.
He is usually off camera. She is in front of it in nearly every shot, and for all intents and purposes you could say that this is a predominantly one-woman show, and of Katie Featherston's performance it's sufficient to claim it is excellent for the aim of this film. She's not Emma Thompson, she's a young woman who looks and talks completely like she might be an everyday college student who has newly moved in with her boyfriend. Micah acts, well, precisely like a man. The sort who still has a rock band at thirty. Katie has been disturbed by some kind of ghostlike apparition since she was a child, and now she's gravely bothered, and Micah's reaction isn't much concern but a resolve to get it all down on camera. Nearly all horror movies are about teenagers for purely commercial reasons, and this film has the quality of showing us completely and totally relatable young people.
I of course know thanks to IMDb that Paranormal Activity does actually have a writer-director, Oren Peli, and naturally other technical credits. Though akin to The Blair Witch Project, with which it's of course likened, it goes near and far to look like a film found after the fact. It succeeds. It demonstrates that quiet and anticipation can be more engrossing than machine-gun fast-cutting and manic effects. For long durations here, not a thing is going on, and trust me, you'll be paying strict attention.