Movie Review: Paranormal Activity

For too long gory, multi-million-dollar excess-fests have left movie-going audiences jaded and desensitized to the horror genre. So far this decade, scary moviemakers seem to have focused only on grossing vast sums of money at the box office with the help of scantily clad actors and computer-generated creatures that go bump in the night.

But 2009 is a new year and a new dawn for the industry of cinematic fright. It took one week and $15,000 to film Paranormal Activity (2009), which could easily be called one of the scariest movies of the decade, if not of all time.

Paranormal Activity is terrifying in its simplicity. It employs the home movie style used in films like The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Cloverfield (2008), but the film doesn’t leave its viewers nauseous, and feeling like upchucking their popcorn. This movie’s pseudo-documentarians apparently invested in a tripod, allowing for the film to achieve the desired disturbing simplicity, without the distraction of wobbly camera effects.

The film takes place in the warm and stylish Southern California home of “engaged to be engaged” sweethearts Micah, played by Micah Sloat, and Katie, played by Katie Featherston. When Katie moves in, she brings a history of strange phenomena with her. As little girl, some sort of hostile nonhuman energy often visited her in the middle of the night. This supernatural pest stayed with her through the fire that destroyed her childhood home and into her life with Micah. After a few years of lull in supernatural episodes, Katie’s life turns unbelievably creepy again. Micah decides to film the couple sleeping every night, as most of the aforementioned creepiness happens during this time.

When the scene goes dark, and the couple climbs into bed, all one can hear are fellow moviegoers beginning to hyperventilate. Katie’s demon (according to the psychic, played by Mark Fredrichs, who found the energy in their house too negative to stay) throws them a new and horrifying curve every time they turn the lights out. Each night for this formerly happy couple is more frightening than the next.

In spite of the film’s low budget, generally associated with painfully cheesy B-movies, director and writer Oren Peli manages to inspire chills in all, save for a miniscule (and to be brutally honest, not fun) handful of cynics. This demon, though we never really see him, is unnerving. He interrupts sleep, he knows exactly how to push Micah and Katie’s (and our) fear buttons; and, worst of all, he has velociraptor-like feet. We find out this disturbing bit of information after Micah decides to put baby powder down in the hallway and entrance to their bedroom. Be forewarned, the footprints go in, but they don’t go out.

This demon is a strange combination of everything we have ever feared as children. Katie’s demon is the monster under all of our beds who is actually found when Micah looks under the metaphorical bed by turning on the camera. What makes Paranormal Activity so delightfully spooky is that it justifies the once very real fears that we have since written off as irrational and childish.

It’s comforting to see that American horror films are starting to shine once again by leaving all of the gratuitousness of expensive filmmaking behind, following the footsteps of simple and horrifying Japanese classics like Ju-On: The Grudge (2003). Paranormal Activity grossed $9.1 million in its first weekend, even though it played in only 200 theaters (don't worry, it's now playing everywhere), and has been one of the trendiest topics on Twitter since its release. However, it seems that Hollywood is, as always, perpetually in search of profit, i.e. Paranormal Activity 2 is due out in 2012.