Paranormal Activity: A Complete And Utter Ripoff

More often than not, hype can ruin a film. High amounts of marketing, ambitions for fangasm, and extreme amounts of excessive chatter concerning the quality of a film only exponentially augments expectation to sheer astronomical proportions. This causes the film to, more often than not, implode upon itself; leading to a somewhat inevitable explosion of disappointment and virulent rage from the fans who propelled it upon such a pedestal. The Star Wars Prequels, many comic-book sequels, The Godfather Part III, and many others have fallen prey to this disease, and now the latest victim is Paranormal Activity. This film took everyone by storm, got hailed as one of the scariest movies of the decade, and turned a profit that even The Blair Witch Project shake within its low budget boots. After seeing it however, I see it within its truest and most basic form: a predictable and cliched Blair Witch Project knockoff that wouldn’t know scary if Michael Myers came up and stabbed it in the face.

Paranormal Activity focuses on a couple named Katie (Katie Featherston) and Micah (Micah Sloat) who have recently moved into a two-story house just inside of suburban San Diego, California. After a few nights in the house, strange things begin to occur and Katie reveals that ever since she was a child, she has been haunted of and on by a ghostly presence. Seeking to investigate (as all white people in horror films do), Micah sets up a recording system in the bedroom and precedes to record all of their activities throughout the house: day and night. As the numbers of nightly investigations quickly pass into the double digits, the supernatural events within their house increase in danger and scope, to the point where objects are moved, footprints appear, and even Katie finds herself unknowingly possessed. All of this spirals into a grisly conclusion, which varies in its ferocity according to which ending of the film that you actually watch.

Looking at this film, it’s not hard to note the similarities to The Blair Witch Project, which is ultimately the biggest problem with the film. Paranormal Activity takes everything that made Blair Witch scary and attempts to copy it: from the low budget hand-held feel and the improvised script, to the extremely slow pacing and deliberate conclusion, Paranormal Activity is completely by-the-numbers; leaving nothing to the imagination or to surprise. The entire time, you predict when everything happens and precisely how intense on the supposed scale of “scariness” it is. The door moves at the time it’s expected, the screams occur when expected, and even the grand finale and how it happens occurs in the exact time, place, and method that is expected. As you can imagine, this just results in the film simply becoming a formulaic borefest, which completely decimates any chance it had of being scary.

Added to its predictability in execution and its bumbling stupidity with its other elements. For one thing, there is the setting of the film, which takes place in suburban California where a Starbucks is within five minutes driving distance. Spoilers: supposedly trapping people in a house with a demon doesn’t work when they can just drive to a police station within two seconds or get to the 24 hour wal-mart in five. Now you may think that this change in setting makes the film even more scary because it’s somewhere that we are familiar with, but it doesn’t because this setting and the way it is handled leaves a gaping plot hole in the form of an escape that the characters could make at any time from the situation. Added to this are the characters themselves, which destroy any emotional involvement because of their utter stupidity. They play the stereotypical white person in a horror film to a tee: stubbornly investigating a potentially fatal situation until it’s too late, where rather than run, they precede to continue on anyway. It is annoying, grating, and quite irritating to watch.

Now granted, the actors did a decent job and the usage of the budget was fairly good, but that is not enough to save this movie. It was one of the least satisfying horror films I’ve seen in a while, and the thought of its sequel actually makes me vomit. Those who think this is scary don’t know what scary is.