Review: Paranormal Activity

Short version: HOMINA HOMINA HOMINA OH MY GOD STAIRS

Longer version: Sparse, diegetic style and meticulous attention to mood and pacing combine to scare the everloving bejeezus out of you. The single scariest movie I think I have ever seen, more haunting than Funny Games and with the same attention paid to the expectations of the genre.

Longest version (SPOILERS!)

Summary: The film presents a series of home-recorded video files taken by main characters Katie and Micah, a young upper-middle-class couple living in a nice San Diego home. Katie has apparently been plagued by strange paranormal experiences since her childhood, and Micah, ever the doting boyfriend, has decided to spend a ridiculous amount of money buying a camera with which to record these occult shenanigans (to what end is not always clear). So begins an uninterrupted festival of tension and terror that I am not sure I can truly do justice.

Paranormal Activity is one of a body of horror works that I wish I knew (or could safely invent) a fancy term for: films made by people who grew up with horror films, who know all the tricks of and expectations pertaining to the movies, and who use those expectations and that knowledge to manipulate their audience into an experience of real fright. Post-post-horror, if you will. The film's style owes a lot to The Blair Witch Project, obviously, but at the same time knocks it out of the water, focusing on a much more sparse, (mostly) subtle, believable story that is nevertheless just weird enough to be unsettling.

And unsettling it is, my friends. Terrifying, even. I and the rest of the theater spent most of the movie screaming; what periods of silence we had were punctuated by constant squeaks of "Oh God", and I several times slammed myself backwards into my seat while shouting—and I do not scream at movies as a rule. The film achieves its scares with minimal special effects and an amazing sense of pacing, starting small enough that I freaked myself out waiting for something to freak me out and then piling it on thicker and thicker as it went on. It doesn't try to explain itself; it doesn't pretend to make sense; it doesn't attempt to satisfy or resolve. It tells a story that is about two lives being wrecked by something no-one involved understands, and it tells that story in a way that makes it feel like it could happen to you. It renders an average environment terrifying, and creates the sense of something wholly outside acceptable reality with a minimum of special effects shenanigans for us overactive brains to deconstruct. Even beyond how scared I was, I have to praise the movie for using the found footage narrative framework with such acumen and style.

I will take this baby down off the pedestal and point out the clay foot, though: for all it is terrifying, Paranormal Activity is also a little conventional. Horror tropes stare the viewer right in the face, from Micah's overhyped male bravado to the deep need for somebody to read an explanation of the monster out of the book. Expectations are rewarded, though not always on the most comfortable schedule, and I think that does lessen the impact. At the same time, though, I can't think of a way to dodge those tropes that doesn't either leave the writer painted into a corner or look just as blatant in its avoidance and inversion as the use of those tropes was in the first place; and in truth, those old chestnuts are presented in such an inventive and generally believable manner that I don't think they do as much harm as they do when seen in lesser productions.

END SPOILERS

All in all, I'm giving this baby five out of five horrifying noises in the middle of the night. I recommend it to any horror movie fan, and I really do think their tagline about not seeing it alone is true; you'll want somebody to share this experience with you, and you almost certainly do not want to try to make the drive home alone. I, myself, am alone now for the first time since seeing the movie on Friday, and I'm having trouble with the idea of going to sleep. Some part of me is expecting the weird noises to start as soon as I hit Post. Good thing I haven't been fighting with my girlfriend...

(And of course a plane flies overhead right as I go to hit Post, creating a dull metallic moan that made my head snap up with enough speed to compact some vertebrae. Thanks, universe, that's exactly what I needed.)