Movie Review: Paranormal Activity

Let's get one thing straight right from the start: this is not a film I would ordinarily have chosen to watch, for two reasons. Firstly it's a horror movie, and although I would class myself, generally, as a horror fan - I've watched dozens over the years - I have to say that recently (and we're talking the last ten years probably) there's hardly been a decent horror film made. At all. In my opinion. They're all either slick CGI'd gorefests, or sick CGI'd gorefests, or just plain boring. The only one I can think of right now, within that 10-year window, that I really enjoyed was Gothica, and I'm not even sure that counts as a horror movie. I just checked and What Lies Beneath just makes it into the ten years, having been made in 2000. So those two, then. Apart from that, no. I reckon the horror genre has lost its way bigtime.

Second reason: it's made in that Blair-Witch-Project, Cloverfield-esque way with the pretend hand-held home camcorder amateur video shtick which, frankly, doesn't work for me at all. If I wanted to watch home movies I could go to any one of a dozen friends' houses and watch their crap. And in many cases their "crap" would actually be way better than this stuff that only pretends to be hand made in some kind of false, arty way that is just irritating.

So I wasn't expecting much, as you've no doubt realised by now. So why did I go? Well, it's Halloween for one. It was a Chorlton Players fundraiser - their first movie night - for two, and I like to support their efforts. And it was a girls' weekend for three. I often feel like we don't "do" much, so when a convenient local opportunity arises to do something a little (only a little) out of the ordinary, I don't like to pass it up.

And why Paranormal Activity? Well there was a choice of movies on offer which was put to a web vote, and this one won. I'll come clean and add that it got my vote too, because it was pretty much the only one on the list I hadn't seen before (alongside such staples as Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, Halloween, and American Werewolf in London, all of which I've seen a thousand times), and I didn't know about the Cloverfield production thing at the time.

I called this a "movie review" and so far this post has all been set-up, so let's get to the review part. It was OK.

What, you wanted more? Oh, alright. For much of the first half I could hardly hear a word they were saying. I think that's another aspect of the faux-home made thing; that they deliberately muddy the sound and mess with the levels so it's sometimes too loud, sometimes too quiet. Or maybe I'm just going deaf. Anyway, that. And it took forever to get started. OK, OK, I get it: there's something weird going on in the house and you're going to try to get it on tape. Jeez, does it really take twenty minutes (or something) to get that message across? Yes, there's some spooky stuff that sets your head tingling a bit, but the hard core frighteners, such as they are, are all in the last quarter (of what is really a very short movie - 86 minutes). I guess it's an attempt to build up the tension, but it's a bit weak. So, on balance, a bit meh, slow and boring for most of the first half, approaching interesting for most of the second half, with some occasional high points.

But fair play, for a film that only cost $11,000 to make and was filmed over 10 days in the director's own house, not a bad first effort. Be interesting to see what this guy is making in ten years' time, when you think how Spielberg got started. At least he didn't go down the gorefest route. I think a slightly less predictable ending would have been better, but it wasn't all bad.