Film Review: Paranormal Activity

Paranormal Activity

This was the worst porno film I've ever had the displeasure of watching. Where was the sex??? It was just nothing but those in between scenes where the girl tells the guy to shut the camera off. Usually there's a payoff... Wait this was supposed to be an amateur sex tape right? Because that's exactly how it felt.

Now I know, the point was to make the film seem real, as if these events were actually happening to these people. However, I just can’t say that they succeeded in doing so. These characters do not feel like real people. Sure, the quality of the camera work seems like something that real people could do. Of course, the effects used in this movie do not feel overly fake like they do in most horror films. What makes this film fail is that the characters themselves fall right into the same horror movie cliché. They are so stupid to the point that no real person would have reacted to their situation the same way, and thus, loses all believability.

The male character in the film, Micah, plays the stereotypical horror character that throughout the film thinks he can outsmart, outfight, and basically beat the villain, just because he is so cool. I like to call this character “the horror tool.” Micah fits the bill precisely. Why would any person who actually believes that a demon is haunting their house and their girlfriend go around provoking said demon? Well, because it moves the plot along and gives you some resemblance to a story (which there is very little to begin with). A real, rational thinking person would do anything they can to make the paranormal activity go away. This guy wants to make it mad. Typical horror tool behaviour.

The female character, Katie, is a lot more believable. However, she doesn’t do enough to try and stop what is happening to her and just kind of lets Micah run the show. In order for a film to feel real, to have the kind of suspense that everyone is praising Paranormal Activity for, you have to be able to relate to the characters. You have to be able to feel sympathy for the characters. You have to think to yourself that what you are watching on screen could happen to you. Not once during this film did I feel any of that.

Instead, I found myself frustrated with their actions. For example, the couple leaves the door to their bedroom wide open throughout the entire film, inviting the demon inside. Would anybody actually do that? I’m not suggesting that simply closing the door would have stopped the demon, but any real person would have at least tried to close and lock the door. These two didn’t think of that. Nor did they try very hard to bring in experts to try and solve the problem.

The film plays out just like The Blair Witch Project only inside of a house rather than in the woods. Very little story, not much actually happens, several unnecessary boring scenes, terrible acting and about 5 minutes of genuinely creepy stuff towards the end. This does not make a good film. I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t on the edge of my seat, the film was actual pretty laughable to me. I was hoping that the ending would be good, and at least give the film some form of redeeming quality, but really it was just totally anticlimactic. I never had high hopes for the film, but it even fell below whatever curiosity I had, sparked by all the praise it had been given. This was by far the worst film I have seen this year, and really the worst I have seen in a long time.

2/10