It's been a long night...
Something killed Paranormal Activity. It wasn’t a demon or ghost but something much worse: The blogosphere. I write to you as a fledgling member of the blogging community and as one who is subject to the changing tides of opinion and analysis. I heard about Paranormal Activity the same way I suspect nearly everyone did. I read on the film blogs that this film would be one of the scariest of all time. I watched the trailer with all the night vision shots of people in the audience screaming at sheets blowing, mysterious footsteps marked in powder and chandeliers shaking. Then I did my homework and read up about the film’s 11,000-dollar budget and Steven Spielberg’s input influencing the theatrical ending. I voted on the Eventful page set up to determine which cities would get to see Paranormal Activity first. Once I got wind that one New Jersey theater would be screening the film, I did one final thing: I went to the movies.
Paranormal Activity tells the story of Micah and Katie. They are a normal young couple getting acclimated to their new home. Everything is as normal as can be except for one thing: strange things have been happening to Katie, on and off, since she was a little girl. These strange things are not limited to hearing sounds in the middle of the night and feeling “breathing” on her neck at various times. When things begin shifting around on their own in the dark and strange noises echo in the staircases of their new home, Micah goes out and purchases some professional video equipment to capture it all. Things go from bad to worse when Micah decides to set the camera on a tripod in order to film the couple sleeping. You know the rest and, if you don’t, I’m not going to be the guy who spoils it.
The acting needs to be very believable considering it’s a two-person show throughout the entire film. Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston do a much better job than anticipated. Sloat is very believable as the hard-nosed boyfriend who fights against seeking any outside help. Featherston must dig even deeper into her limited acting arsenal. She pulls off a performance that is both vulnerable and real. Katie’s degeneration is made all the more believable by Featherston’s strong performance. The two play off each other exceptionally well. Sloat even provides some very memorable one-liners. This is the film’s strongest point. The relationship between Micah and Katie is very watchable. I credit director Oren Peli for getting the most out of his performers
The end of Paranormal Activity, while some of it is revealed in the trailer, is very effective. It is, without a doubt, the film’s scariest moment. Many people are up in arms over Steven Spielberg apparently offering some input and getting the original ending changed. I will say that the culmination of the film’s one main theme (the vulnerability of human sleep) is a very worthy addition to the horror canon. There are still 85 minutes of film separating the opening and the aforementioned ending. Those 85 minutes, while partially salvaged by the lead performances, are missing a big something.
Now I could write you a short story about the hundreds of people in line for the midnight show or the random one-liners tossed out throughout the film by a restless audience obviously expecting something more. It’s an easy trap to fall into. The fact remains: Paranormal Activity wants you to talk about the “experience” rather than the “movie” to cover up the fact that you’re seeing a 90-minute, faulty YouTube experiment. The worst part about the entire buzz building around the film is the readily available trailer. The trailer, as cliché as it sounds, literally spoils almost all the scares from the beginning of the film right up to its final moments. The payoffs throughout the film leave a ton to be desired. The sheets move (in the trailer) the shadows on the door (in the trailer) the footprints through the powder (in the trailer) the chandelier shakes (in the trailer). I think you get my point. There are only two scares that I can think of off the top of my head that aren’t presented in the trailer. I just needed to have something more, which, considering the budget handicap, is a lot to ask for. Oren Peli does his best but the film, while it succeeds in being different, wavers in its effectiveness. When all is said and done, it just doesn’t seem worth the inflated price of admission.
The buzz surrounding Paranormal Activity is massive. The film has steamrolled towards a wide release and will undoubtedly make Paramount boatloads of cash. The movie is the feel-good story of a DIY production with a scrappy director and a cast willing to give it their all. I can’t fault the effort, but that’s not the business bloggers are in. Paranormal Activity, while it falters as a film, reminds us just how far we’ve come since that summer ten years ago, when the viral marketing train left the station.
