November 2009
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Paranormal Activity (15)
Printed 25th November 2009

Paranormal Activity arrives on UK shores amidst a hail of hype the likes of which hasn’t been seen since The Blair Witch Project ten years ago. Released in limited cinemas over a month ago in the States the camcorder phenomenon stirred up such a scare that expectant audiences around the country demanded it be shown in their city (through an innovative online voting system) that it originally wasn’t ever scheduled to be.

Of course the question you have to ask yourself is whether this is all just creative marketing to help sell the next “little indie that could” or justified praise for a genuinely unsettling and scary cinema sensation the likes of which we don’t see often enough among the endless teen-friendly remakes and cash-in sequels and torture porn tosh. Well let’s answer it this way: if Jaws made people frightened of Open Water and Blair Witch put people off rambling in the woods then Paranormal Activity will make you terrified of what’s happening in your own home after you’ve entered slumberland. In other words: be afraid, be very afraid.

The simple premise behind this success story sees “engaged to be engaged” couple Katie and Micah (movie debutants Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) move into a plush new home only to become increasingly convinced there may be a otherworldly presence already there after hearing strange noises in the dead of the night. In order to prove their suspicions, Micah buys a high-def video camera and sets it up at the foot of their bed to document the strange nightly goings-on. But this only seems to trigger an escalation in the Paranormal Activity and things soon go from bad-to-worse for the unfortunate pair.

An exercise in edge of your seat tension and escalating terror, Paranormal’s zippy 85-minuite runtime starts with an overwhelming sense of foreboding and constantly keeps building its scares from here until it reaches its gasp-inducing, fingers over the eyes, blood-chilling conclusion. Employing old-skool, simplistic spook house tricks (but you know what they say, the old ones are the best ones), savvy creator and first-time feature-filmer Oren Peli keeps this sense of expectant dread growing throughout by carefully intensifying the night hauntings and constantly keeping you guessing as to when the big film-concluding night will come to release from us from its compelling but frightening clutches. You’ve got to endure through fear to earn the cathartic release. Even then, it might not be the ending you were looking for.

Of course these dimly-lit, eyes anxiously screen-scanning in search of where the scare is going to come from scenes in Paranormal Activity are the key reason why you go to see the fright-fest. But they wouldn’t work half as well without their co-dependent downtime daytime scenes of Katie and Micah’s deteriorating relationship as she becomes increasingly withdrawn and he becomes increasingly obsessed (providing a reasonable and believable explanation for why the protagonists keep on filming in a more convincing way that either Blair Witch or Cloverfield managed). Therefore the seemingly effortless performances of unknown pairing Featherston and Sloat (think Ben Affleck and Lauren Conrad minus the Hollywood gloss) must have been a delight for Peli to witness as they come across completely natural and devoid of any ingrained acting-101 tics. It’s truly as if they have been a couple for years and the palpable chemistry between them is there for all to see.

Deserving of the hype and praise that is currently being heaped upon it, Paranormal Activity only lets itself down in its last dying generic moments (shave off literally ten seconds and you have the perfect open-to-discussion ending. Exactly like The Bourne Ultimatum actually...). This tiny misstep aside though, it is undoubtedly the type of “proper” scary movie (as in it will stay with you long after the film has finished, no doubt affecting your own sleep pattern) that delivers 100% on an audience level and demands to be viscerally experienced in a darkened room alongside a group of equally scared strangers. Go get spooked.

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