Another Take on Paranormal Activity: What Evil Stoops to Pushing Your Keys on to the Floor?

Posted by ScuzzBuster

November 3, 2009

Since I’ve spent the last two weeks contemplating various avenues of suicide from the depressing children’s book adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, I found myself deciding to hit Paranormal Activity as it went wide release this weekend. After a rather well thought out review from Zabaduba HERE, I hadn’t planned on seeing it, but the choices have been pretty slim and since our occasional co-writer here is really the one that introduced me to modern horror film appreciation 20 years or so ago, I figured I better pay attention at even a moderately good review from him.

For those that haven’t passed any homeless people with sandwich boards advertising this film through it’s relatively unconventional marketing campaign, Paranormal Activity is another entry in the “handheld reality” film genre. I’m not totally convinced that this type of film actually warrants the label of “genre” since it seems almost always to piggy back on another more “thriller” oriented genre. To my knowledge, there hasn’t been any of these films that have ventured too far away from the film that introduced it, The Blair Witch Project in 1999, unless I’ve missed some romantic comedy made in this style.
I should point out that in spite of the “Blair Witch” backlash which is common for anything new that gets hot really quickly, I loved the film. It was new. It worked well stirring horror in a way which we really hadn’t seen in a motion picture before. I don’t know for sure if it’s really never been done so well since, or whether it’s just a sub-genre of horror film that is difficult to utilize effectively. All of the films that are in this genre suffer from some of the same pitfalls and generally ask the audience to swallow a bare minimum of one or two inexplicably unbelievable premises from a human behavior aspect. In Paranormal Activity, as in Blair Witch, Cloverfield and others, we’re asked to swallow that people continue to keep filming long after any real person would have long just dropped the camera and gotten the heck out. Hell, in Cloverfied, the cameraman comes within an inch of taking the running, camera with the “everlast” battery down the gullet of the giant monster.

However, I do believe that Paranormal Activity sets out to do what it intends to do incredibly well. Like usual, we are trapped in the “hokey” exposition pieces asked to accept that anyone who has a new camera is automatically going to film quite a few off the cuff moments that just happen to give you enough information to tie all the rest of the remarkably “discovered” footage together enough to make sense. Likewise, this film takes the rather lame approach of half-heartedly making the viewer believe that film is “real.” In this case, a brief thank you from Paramount to the local police department. I have a small twinge of guilt about even giving these films a pass on this in the off chance there are still those that might actually make some casual connection between these films and reality. I was okay with Blair Witch because it was part of the whole campaign. They pushed it to the limit of ethical promotion, but it completely kills me to see films try to capitalize on some hokey fear mongering exploitation measure cough**2012**cough.

In any case, Paranormal Activity doesn’t work simply because its of the reality show style, it works because the director/writer Oren Peli knows what goes into making an unnerving and scary scene. It’s all about what’s we don’t see, but what we imagine is on the other side of that dark hallway. As soon as the film reaches the point where the only way to continue to build it is to have to show openly what we should be afraid of, then the film has outworn it’s welcome. In this case, the young couple Micah and Katie have set up the camera at the foot of their bed to see what they could capture in relationship to a series of bizarre events that have been occurring to them recently. Strange noises, misplaced objects, flickering lights, the regular haunting combo plate, basically.

In the end, it’s surprising how little real substance there is in a film like this for as much entertainment as it provides. However, there’s still so little of this reality genre mixed in with the wasteland of other entertainment that the rough-around-the-edges look and feel of the production still manages to subconsciously tie what you’re watching into the part of your brain that links it with reality as opposed to the usual fantasy world we associate with most television and film entertainment.

Of course, the realistic style isn’t enough to drive a 90 minute piece of filmmaking. In this case, we have just a couple of ingredients. There’s only 4 characters in this film, and two of them have a total of less than 10 minutes of screen time. It’s very difficult to judge a performance of this type, but you always have to acknowledge when two actors can hold an audience for this period of time. Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat (yes, the actors names as well as the characters) play this petty much letter perfect. They’re believable and real. They aren’t always eloquent or pretty. They have zits, wear scuzzy clothes when they’re around the house and tease each other with lame jokes. In fact, they’re both so real, you don’t really even like them. You care just enough to not really want to see them fall victim to whatever the hell starts moving furniture around, pounding on the wall, dropping keys on the floor and flipping lights on and off.

The formula is pretty standard. In fact, if you compare them on paper, Paranormal Activity is almost identical to one of the other highly entertaining horror films that came out this year, Drag Me To Hell, Sam Raimi’s return to the horror genre. Young couple. A haunting centered around the girl–and you could literally check off over half a dozen more bullet points where the stories are identical or nearly identical. But that’s okay. In fact, it’s a huge compliment to both films for telling virtually the same story in two entirely different ways.

I’m cautiously giving Paranormal Activity a “go for it” recommendation, but if you just never really dug the handheld reality genre, pass because there’s nothing here that’s going to change that opinion. Some people just don’t “get” it. I don’t really mean that in a negative way, it just doesn’t click with some people and I respect that. It’s a hit and miss sub-genre that really doesn’t go very far in transcending bad material. For those critical of the problems of this type of genre, this one has all the same big red flags on it as all the others, but by the end, it was a worthwhile and enjoyable ride. And that’s saying something for a film that has only two characters, one camera, one setting which it never leaves and not one lick of incidental music from start to finish. It’s a well-done little jaunt.