Paranormal Activity

PATRICE

This is our review of “Paranormal Activity,” directed by Oren Peli, and first shown at the Screamfest Film Festival in October 2007. This film was in limbo for two years, pending a remake by Paramount, the company that purchased it. It was ultimately decided, based on audience response, that a remake could not make it any better and it was finally released it only 10 cities nationwide. It stars Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat. Running time is 99 minutes. [The current version has an alternate ending to the original, but we did not cover that in our review.]

KELLY

Hollywood finally got one right, yay!

PATRICE

Yeah. So let’s get to the disclaimer. I’m going to state for the record we are not experts, nor are we real movie critics.

KELLY

We are mouthy broads.

PATRICE

Yes, we’re mouthy broads, we’re very opinionated, we know what we like. We watch a lot of movies, not just horror movies, and we each think that we can tell the good from the shit. We don’t always agree.

KELLY

Yeah, there’s Blair Witch. I really liked that one.

PATRICE

I think that’s really the only one we haven’t agreed on. I thought it sucked.

KELLY

Ok, so moving on, Paranormal Activity…

PATRICE

So the premise: Young couple moves into a house and there is something going on that is paranormal. They basically don’t give you a lot of back story, but you discover that the girl in this couple has been experiencing some weirdness since she was a child, so it appears that the weird things are not so much attached to the house as they are to her. What they propose to do is to try to figure out what it is, so the boyfriend’s idea is to buy an expensive movie camera and try to film everything. Daytime and nighttime.

KELLY

From reading some of the early reviews, I pretty much figured from the get-go that I was going to dislike that aspect of the movie. Sort of like with Blair Witch, what I disliked about that movie was that you had the character that was just ‘have to take camera everywhere, have to take the camera everywhere’. However, for the sake of the film, if you don’t take camera everywhere, you have no movie. So, okay, I get that, but I felt at the same time, it was setting up ‘the jerk’ boyfriend who just HAD to get the shot of this and HAD to get the shot of that.

PATRICE

Right. In order to actually capture the rest of their lives which is obviously more than just them sleeping at night, there’s got to be connecting back story and it also gives them a chance to present the characters of this guy and girl who, I have to say, as I already read in other reviews, were not actors, had never acted before and didn’t know each other prior to this…

KELLY

Really? I thought they did a stellar job.

PATRICE

It’s amazing, as has been pointed out, how natural they seem as a couple.

KELLY

Did they have any kind of a script or was it just “here’s your motivation, go”?

PATRICE

I think it was a basic script but they had a lot of leverage to improvise, it’s the only way to make it more natural. They present the two character types: she’s dead serious about what’s going on because she’s been experiencing it for a number of years and it really frightens her - even though at first, probably the first half of the movie - you don’t get the sense that she’s all that terrified about this like I think I would be if I truly thought something was following me.

KELLY

Or like how she mentions as a child she would see a giant dark shadow at the foot of her bed. It just stands to reason you’d be a little scared.

PATRICE

The boyfriend character, he’s really obviously enchanted with the technology, with the filming, the camera, he’s having fun with it. Not that he doesn’t take her seriously. Up to a point, he hasn’t seen anything, he’s just hearing weird noises, but we’ve all heard weird noises at night in new houses. So, what you get is sort of this set up where you understand where they’re each coming from. He’s supporting her and nurturing her, but he’s also having fun with the situation and it doesn’t really, I think, sink in with either one of them for a while, that something really is going on and that it really could actually be dangerous.

KELLY

But here’s the thing, there comes a point in the story where crazy, obviously scary things are taking place but it seemed like it hit that point in the movies where in real life, any normal person would be like “we’ve got to get the hell out of here” or “we’ve got to do something, anything, to put a stop to this” and the girlfriend’s saying that but the boyfriend keeps putting the kibosh on it. He keeps saying “No, no, no, I can handle this, I’m the boyfriend, I’m going to fix this,” and it’s now past bumps in the night, it’s to the point where some really scary dangerous shit is going down.

PATRICE

And that’s one difference in this movie – you know how common this theme is in horror movies where something strange is going on in a house and the people just don’t get the hell out. Obviously there would be no movie if they did, but I think they took care of that plot point in this movie because they made it about her, that whatever it is has followed her, so that even if they leave the house, she can’t get away from it.

KELLY

But that wasn’t the issue that she wanted to get out of the house, it was that she wanted to fix the problem and she kept saying “let’s call the demon guy, let’s call the demon guy.” I mean, c’mon, that would have been the first thing I would have done instead of “hmm, let me mess with this over here and let me try to catch a glimpse over there” and it’s like “No, you idiot, that hasn’t worked so far”.

PATRICE

You know, that’s a good point, because you know in any other movie, that would be the point when they’d get the hell out, but in this movie, it’s ‘why the hell didn’t they get the demonologist’ like the paranormal expert suggested at the beginning. By the time they do try to call him, he’s not available, but they wait until things are really dire. I suppose if there’s anything cliché about this movie, it’s that.

And I don’t want to hear about the shaky cam and all that.

KELLY

First of all, it sits on a table most of the time.

PATRICE

And honestly, the way this movie is done, you know it’s not real, they tell you up front it’s not real. It’s done in such a way that if someone really were doing this in their home, it would look like this. The way they move it around, when they’re adjusting it or when they stop looking through the lens and put the camera down by their side, it all follows perfectly natural movements. So I never got the impression they were overdoing the whole “let’s emphasize that it’s being handheld and it’s shaky.”

KELLY

That was some of the pushback that I saw on some reviews, from those who hadn’t actually seen the movie yet, saying “Well, I probably won’t like it because of the shaky cam thing.” But that’s not really even a problem. And yeah, the shaky cam thing is sort of the new deal in movies; it’s the pretty thing to do nowadays.

PATRICE

It’s so artsy!

KELLY

Usually it’s (shakiness) done because it’s low-budget or they’re trying to make you put the psychological factor in, where you’re brain is putting the scary monster image together from the bits of the shots from the camera moving all over the place, you know, whatever your nightmare is. But they were able to accomplish that in this movie without actually doing the ‘I’m gonna move the camera all over the place so you can’t focus on one thing that way you create your own scary vision’. So with this, you have to keep staring at one spot and the entire time you’re thinking ‘Please don’t let anything pop out of that dark spot because I’m gonna crap myself if it does!’

PATRICE

I found myself, when they’re doing the wide angle shot of the whole bedroom…

KELLY

Ugh, I hate those, scared the shit out of me!

PATRICE

…I found that when you watch this movie, your eyes are darting all over that room…

KELLY

And you’re thinking ‘please don’t let my eyes settle on something that’s going to scare me…’

PATRICE

Yes! And you’re willing yourself to see it before it takes you by surprise and that’s the thing that put me on edge.

I found it odd that Katie is very matter of fact about [the playback of the video]. Why wouldn’t you be so fucking terrified upon seeing the film the next morning when you’re sitting there in the broad daylight watching the computer screen?? My first thought was if I were watching myself in bed and the sheets moved or the door moved or there was a shadow, I’d scream, just watching the replay!

KELLY

But then again, we have to go back to the back story which is that she’s experienced this stuff her whole life. She’s seen some figure standing at the end of her bed and had weird things follow her.

PATRICE

Exactly. I agree, she is terrified, but she’s also kind of used to it. The point is that, the girlfriend in this movie, we know she’s had a history, and at some point in the movie, she does become as terrified as you would think you would be if this were happening to you. But up to that point, both Katie and Micah seem to be ultra-casual about it, like in a way I just can’t imagine if this were really happening.

KELLY

And I really want to talk about the ending, however we don’t want to do any spoilers or anything, but I will say that was definitely one of the better endings I’ve ever seen! And Patrice, I wish I had a picture of your face because your hands flew over your mouth and you were going “AAAAHHHHH”.

PATRICE

Oh, I know, I screamed! And I honestly don’t scare easily. I love horror movies and I have been watching horror movies since I was a child…

KELLY

Your eyes were as big as saucers! But that just goes to show you that I was watching you and not the screen because it was too damn scary! I was such a pansy, I just couldn’t watch it!

PATRICE

Yeah, I’m sure Siskel and Ebert did that often! It’s amazing how the simplest thing… like one reviewer said, it’s perhaps the most frightening thing in the movie when that bedroom door moves an inch. And there’s so much more that happens that you’re not going to read in any review because no one wants you to know ahead of time. It’s well worth it to see how this all plays out, but just to know that they’ve managed to make the subtlest evidence of whatever it is so terrifying. It’s more satisfying than any bloody, gory, slasher film or CGI laden film. All the special effects in the world wouldn’t creep you out as much as this did because it seems so real, everything that’s happening is absolutely genuine.

KELLY

There were some things in the film that I’m thinking if they’re not CGI, then I’m really impressed with how they managed to do it. And that’s part of the draw of the movie, it was made for just $15K and that was a focus of the PR: ‘well, we did this for practically free’. I mean, it’s less than the price of a car! There’s a certain scene where I’m still trying to wrap my brain around how they managed to do that.

PATRICE

Yeah, there some things where I thought to myself they could have someone off camera that’s just making noises or moving stuff, but you could imagine off-camera people doing those things in any other horror movie. There are things aren’t necessarily on screen at all times. It’s just scarier if you don’t always see it. My take on this is that it was indeed it was freaky, creepy, scary as some of these seasoned reviewers said that it was.

KELLY

Now, was it the scariest movie of all time like some of the marketing would have you believe? No.

PATRICE

Oh, no.

KELLY

But definitely still worth all the hype. I mean, that was just marketing, and that’s fine, they needed to get people to go and see the movie and you know what, they did a hell of a job of marketing. The viral marketing, the Tweet Your Scream (@tweetyourscream) , the Facebook fan page, doing the Demand It voting, I’ve enjoyed participating in that just as much as actually going to see the movie. It was totally worth it.

PATRICE

Participating in the promotion was a big part of it. I very much enjoyed posting the stuff on Facebook and commenting because I knew every time I touched the updates, that everybody I know was going to see that and it would just spread and it kept going…

KELLY

Like syphilis…

PATRICE

Yeah, it’s the gift that keeps on giving! And knowing that 975 people, at last count, did the Demand It just in Atlanta is pretty cool. I had also read that all of these towns were college towns. I hadn’t really thought of that because they never really presented it that way. They never said ‘this is what we’re going for’, but that’s great viral marketing. Plus, it’s usually a college town where you get more demand for the offbeat, independent things.

KELLY

And you get people who will show up for free things, in the middle of the night, on a school night.

PATRICE

Yeah, free stuff at midnight on a Thursday, I mean, c’mon. I wonder if the others that are screening tonight will be looking on the internet to see if anyone’s talking yet, like the ones in California.

KELLY

Yeah, probably. When I did the Tweet Your Scream, that Twitterer reposted it almost immediately and then also reposted the tweet of a person standing in line out in California. So we know that info is being posted on the internet and if someone is tweeting out in California, stands to reason they’d be looking for others’ takes. And now, for me, I’m gonna do my best to try to go to sleep with all that in my head!

PATRICE

All in all, it was a great experience. It wasn’t just the movie: it was the packed house, the atmosphere; the audience was obviously perfect for this.

KELLY

And it was a total mix of people. I had noticed that early on.

PATRICE

Yes, a great mix of people, a lot of diversity.

KELLY

It was all ages, what looked like all different types of ethnicities, you had all different types of looks, like those who looked punk or goth, or nerdy and then we have you coming in with your business attire!

PATRICE

Yeah, gay, straight, you name it. There was metal, some preppy looking people, it was crazy the mixture. The one common thread was that you had this audience that all wanted this movie so badly. It’s not as if they were thinking “hmm, which movie are we going to pick out of this multiplex?” They came there because they were desperately wanted to see this movie and that made it that much more exciting. That place was electric.

KELLY

Especially since people kept screaming in random spots to scare the shit out of everyone.

You know, normally when you go to a theater and people are talking in the middle of it, you get pissed, but with this movie, you knew they weren’t just talking about “hey, what are you up to this weekend” you knew they were discussing some aspect of the movie and for some reason you’re totally cool with it because you’re all in the same mind set and you get it, you get their need to discuss what’s going on. I could hear people murmuring and yeah, there were a couple of times where people would get so freaked out and then wouldn’t stop chattering and that was annoying, but for the most part, it wasn’t really a problem, it wasn’t a bother. There was sort of a sense of camaraderie amongst the freaks and geeks.

PATRICE

The anticipation for all of us looking forward to attending this screening and knowing that we were lucky to have gotten it because so few places did. You could read online where so many people were commenting how the closest place for them to screen the movie was hours from where they live and they were frustrated that they couldn’t see it. So we felt lucky that we live in a city big enough that thankfully hasn’t lost its art cred. I know everybody in there was to some degree thinking that this was not just an ordinary movie because it might now show again. Who knows, it might not have a regular run.

KELLY

I think the studios would be stupid to not have a wider release. It needs to have a large release. Right now, everyone’s talking about it. I immediately tweeted about it as we left the theater, there’s real excitement surrounding it. The powers-that-be would be retarded not to cash in on this.

PATRICE

You know, the articles that made the comparison between Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch were talking about how BW made so much money compared to what was actually spent on it and they’re like “well, we don’t know if it will do the same thing”.

KELLY

Oh, I think this movie would blow BW out of the water. Now, I love BW, and always will, but I think this movie totally blew it out of the water.

PATRICE

I cannot emphasize how incredibly simple this movie was. You know, if you’re a fan of horror movies and you’ve seen all the different variations and movies from different countries with different story lines and styles, this one is incredible; it’s taking back to the absolute basics.

KELLY

Well, it’s sort of like watching a home video of Christmas at Uncle Bob’s and all of a sudden the door starts slamming and you’re like “what the hell was that about”.

PATRICE

Yeah, I can’t emphasize enough how realistic this is and I’m definitely cynical when it comes to the whole genre of ‘reality film’. Even going into knowing it’s not real and them saying in the beginning ‘no, it isn’t real’, it still feels real. I was actually really surprised that they came out and said that.

KELLY

Any time you use that kind of camera to film, that comparison is going to happen, regardless of whether it’s a romantic comedy or another horror film. But I think that by doing that ahead of time, saying it’s not real, they took the air out of that argument before anyone could have it.

PATRICE

Right, and what they essentially said was “look how realistic this seems and you know it’s not real but when you see it…”

KELLY

“…damn aren’t we good!”

PATRICE

Yeah, “…and we have an inexperienced pair of actors that did a hell of a job” especially considering that they carried the entire movie and completely stayed real and that they’re not a couple in real life. I don’t think that they knew each other ahead of time. I think they did an amazing job of making everything seem very genuine in the movie.

KELLY

What was the guy’s job in the movie?

PATRICE

A day trader, stocks. And she was a student.

KELLY

Okay, that explains the pool in the backyard. I missed what his job was and I kept wondering how they could afford to have a nice sized place with a nice pool in San Diego, CA.

PATRICE

But you know what, if you are a movie fan and you have any depth to you at all, you’re going to think of these things while you’re watching. If you’ve watched tons of movies, you start thinking these things, like “oh, well that could never happen” or “well that’s not very realistic” or “I’m not buying into that” and I think that they did a pretty good job or making it believable. It’s not a super fancy house, but it’s sort of what you’d expect for a young couple who have a little bit of money to have. Even the way it’s decorated and everything, it looks like a very ordinary, not professionally decorated home.

KELLY

I agree, it doesn’t look like one of those places you see on a soap opera, with the crazy drapery here and the overly expensive vase of there.

PATRICE

And there was stuff sitting around, there was crap on the refrigerator. I noticed something on the fridge that they blurred out because it obviously had some company name on it. Like a magnet or something. So in that sense, they really got into the detail of making it realistic, rather than just dressing up a set, it really looked like they had just gone into somebody’s home. I can appreciate that because it really does add to the effect while you’re watching it, it really does complete the whole reality feel.

KELLY

Well, to wrap this up, loved this movie and I highly recommend it. I feel it was totally worth the hype. If it comes out in theaters where you’ll have to pay for it, then go ahead and pay to see it!

PATRICE

Hell yeah. I predict it will eventually become a midnight movie and a cult favorite. I’m calling that one right now.

KELLY

A cult favorite, really?

PATRICE

Yeah.

KELLY

Well, I don’t know about that, but Paranormal Activity is an awesome movie. So when Bravo updates “The 100 Scariest Movie Moments,” this movie will be in there.