You can make a hundred comparisons between Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity and that monumental symbol of the hype machine, The Blair Witch Project.
The similarities are obvious: both are essentially ghost stories, told from faux-documentary video footage. Both have small casts of nobodies, first-time directors, and most critically, both have witnessed huge theatrical success despite low budgets.
In almost every review or editorial about Paranormal Activity, you’ll hear about The Blair Witch Project, and for good reason: Peli’s film couldn’t exist without Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s film. Love it or hate it, Blair Witch was a seminal film, a shift in how independent film was seen in the public eye.
So why do I hate The Blair Witch Project and really like Paranormal Activity?
Here’s why: Paranormal Activity is the definition of a slow burn, with a finale that delivers the goods by twisting you around its little finger and then slicing that finger off with a knife. After watching it, you’ll never need to see it again. It’ll never function as well again on a second go around, because the marvelous thing about this sort of film is not knowing where it’s headed.
The Blair Witch Project, on the other hand, isn’t a slow burn — it’s stagnant water. I’m not simply talking about the ending, which I refuse to believe scared anyone, in theaters or on video. I’m talking about a film filled with rustling leaves and not much else.
Peli’s film shows us things, using old tricks that are comparable to a magician’s slight of hand. It’s not fancy, but it’s also not afraid to take the concepts that Blair Witch started and push them in the direction they should have gone since the release of that film.
Instead, there was a decade long silence since Blair Witch. Is the basis for all these comparisons really the fact that no film like Blair Witch has been given a chance to explode in the mainstream until Paranormal Activity?
Unfortunately, the Hollywood system will make the same mistake it always has. Just as the studio pumped more money into Myrick and Sanchez to make Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, this weekend revealed the news that a sequel to Paranormal Activity is in the works, which will certainly up the ante in the budget area.
Let me clue you in, studios: this is a horrible idea that flies in the face of everything that has college kids screaming in crowded theaters this month. Whether you love or hate Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity, they have succeeded on the level of being immediately relatable to audiences via the appearance of realism. With more money, that foundation is lost.
And when that foundation is lost, Saw will reign supreme again. A chance at showing studios that audiences are savvy to something new and exciting will be lost, and it’s back to Formula A, the one we’re so well-acquainted with already.
That’s the worst thing for the horror genre I could possibly imagine.
