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Paranormal Activity Review
23 Nov 2009
Critics rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Reviewed by Tom Charity , LOVEFiLM
Paranormal Activity

This is a movie to rattle and creak through your brain as you lie awake in the wee small hours listening to things that go bump in the night...

That is, if you don’t go in blinded by the spectacular expectations the hype can’t help fostering.

In this day and age news of anything good and different spreads so quickly, it’s hard to keep the excitement of discovery alive.

Horror movies have gone in for so much overkill recently, it’s about time someone went the other direction. This one is so pared back that it doesn’t even have opening titles or closing credits.

If you can believe your eyes, Paramount Pictures picked up the home video footage shot by Micah Sloat and his partner Katie Featherston courtesy of the San Diego police department, paid their families for the privilege and edited it down to the pertinent 96 minutes.

This footage purports to chronicle the couple’s struggles with the demon who has been Katie’s inconstant companion since she was a little girl. This fiend without a face never shows him (or her-) self, but she can hear it in the night, walking up the staircase, creaking in the hallway, whispering in her ear, breathing in her face…

Micah is a little bit skeptical of his girlfriend’s claims, but also intrigued, even excited. It’s his idea to set up a video camera in the bedroom to record them as they sleep. (Hey, maybe he can persuade her to fool around a little too…)

Thing is, when he runs through the recording the next morning, there is an audible disturbance somewhere around one a.m.

And the next night, too, not just a sound but a discernable shadow that flits across the doorway.

Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat

And so it goes. Only the noises are getting louder… The emanations more intrusive…

Katie has been through this before but she is freaked out. Micah is the man of the house; he wants to deal with it. Get a ouji board and see what this thing wants. Every fibre in Katie’s being tells her this is a really, really bad idea…

Inevitably tagged as “the new Blair Witch”, Oren Peli?s film isn’t a genuine home movie, but it was made independently, for not very much money, back in 2007.

The Blair Witch comparison isn’t inaccurate, except that this is entirely a domestic affair – there are no deep, dark woods, Peli never even ventures beyond Micah?s small suburban home. Still, like the earlier picture it is a film that exploits the up close and personal quality of the handicam for its suggestive power.

The special effects are simple but seamless

The special effects are simple but seamless: bedsheets riding up a sleeping body; footprints appearing out of nowhere on a floor. The most chilling device is the video camera’s timecode in the corner of the screen, which fast-forwards through the night and then slows to “real time” whenever Katie’s demon is ready to call action.
   
The two performances are persuasive enough to carry some of the plot’s conveniences. I think most people would get the heck out of there as soon as things get hairy (we’re assured that Katie knows from experience the demon travels with her, so there’s no point, but even so…). I think most people would be looking for outside help more energetically too, but Micah?s arrogant insistence on handling this little problem himself does ring true.

There is a little evidence of padding, perhaps, and you might quibble about the ending – apparently Steven Spielberg came up with the idea because there was some dissatisfaction with Pell’s original – but this little chiller puts most horror films of the last decade to shame.

Paranormal Activity Reviews

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