Paranormal Activity is an example of exceptional marketing. Produced on a budget of $11,000 (U.S.), the film has clocked over the 100 million dollar mark, making it one of the most commercially successful films of the year.
It arrives in Australia on a wave of hype, touted boldly as the “Scariest Movie of All Time”. That it fails to match such expectations should be of no surprise. It is a watchable, sporadically tense and altogether forgettable film experience. It is also one of this year’s must-sees, if only to satisfy personal curiosity over whether it sucks or not. Which of course means it looks set to make another gazillion dollars.
The film follows the lives of a young couple who have just moved in together. Katie has revealed to her boyfriend, Micah that she has been haunted by the supernatural since childhood, and Micah decides to film their lives in the hope of unearthing this paranormal activity.
Filming every aspect of their domestic lives, he even sets up the camera in their bedroom as they sleep, capturing unexplained door slams, croaking voices and Katie’s unsettling, strange sleepwalking. Director Oren Peli keeps these events unusual but believable, attempting to ratchet up the tension through the increasing terror and hysteria of his protagonists.
The two leads give reasonably competent performances although there is little that is endearing about their characters. Their bickering and growing anxiety brings to mind another low budget thriller, Open Water. That film was affecting in a deep, mood altering way that Paranormal Activity perhaps aims for but doesn’t achieve. Both these films are very similar in the way they place their characters in escalating “what if” scenarios, and have them respond in a realistic way. Open Water had the vast, lonely ocean to play with; Paranormal Activity has the equally fertile ground of the supernatural.
Peli wants you to believe that this couple is being haunted and invest in their situation. But despite the frantic home-video style, the film is too repetitive in the way it presents the supernatural threat (slamming doors, loud bangs) to generate any kind of real suspense.
And an audience that requires more then a creaky door to squeal like piglets.
Paranormal Activity is released nationally in Australia on the 3rd December
Director: Oren Peli
Cast: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
Maybe I’m a chicken but I was scared shitless by this film! I wish it was forgettable. Now every frigging creak and thump is a cause for concern.
paranormal stuffs are usually for those persons who are very very supersitious.”.~