Film Review: Paranormal Activity

By Kyle Kernan

Posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009, 1:53 am

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Filmmaker Oren Peli, through incomparable word of mouth, online, and TV campaigns, has crafted one of the biggest independent hits ever. “Paranormal Activity” cost approximately $15,000 dollars to make and was shot in under a week in his own home. He uses “Blair Witch Project” style minimalist filmmaking, garnished with the simplicity of the HD camcorder to turn this nice horror gimmick of “found footage” of ghostly happenings into a phenomenon. It’s been doing great at the box office and scaring millions.

Katie (Katie Featherton) and Micah (Micah Sloat) move into their new home in San Diego. Katie has been haunted by some kind of entity through out her life and thus begins to experience a new barrage of spooks from the same entity in their new home. Her sarcastic, humorous boyfriend uses the opportunity to film the ghostly happenings of the night as things take a turn for the worse.

Audiences are thrust into their home through the limiting perspectives of an HD camera which Micah, Katie or a tripod holds. This creates a tense feeling of claustrophobia and suspense, especially during the tripod shots during the night, as the idle camera stays on the slumbering couple’s bed and down a creepy, faintly lit hallway.

In one scene, the camera shows Katie rising out of her bed. You think she’s just getting up to go to the bathroom, but she ends up standing over the bed motionless. Oh, that’s strange? It gets stranger. The time elapses as a clock reveals that she stands motionless for three hours, and fades down into the dark stairs to god-knows-where. This peculiar chilling moment adds to the foreboding nature of the film as we sense truly horrible things are to come. The constant limited perspective brings questions and unrelenting suspense as we are constantly forced to imagine what lies beyond the reach of the camera.

The camera is an innocent bystander, capturing things we feel we shouldn’t see through the night’s slumber: shadows loom, doors move, grunts and bangs are heard. You begin to feel apprehensive about even looking down the hallway as the faintest shadow can spawn shivers. At night, the house becomes a playground for the entity as it tauntingly tortures the couple.

What’s amazing about the film is the sense of dread leading up to each night scene. The paranormal activity starts off solely at night, yet begins to happen during the day as well.

It sometimes feels like Peli is forcing aspects of the film’s st ory and plot to deliver on a shocking ending. In reality, things would’ve happened differently if the couple relied more on their rationality. Micah, for example, feels he has the power to get rid of the haunting himself, which just seems silly given all the terrible things that happen. Still, tension mounts between the couple as they lose sleep and patience over the ordeal. Katie’s deteriorating mind adds to the authenticity of her fear and makes us feel a deep concern for her.

Hopefully you can escape its scares that will haunt you long after it’s over. In an age of horror remakes and gore fests, “Paranormal Activity” is so simple and original, it’s scary.

Grade: A –