Click to play videoCast: Micah Sloat, Katie Featherston, Mark Fredrichs
Direction: Oren Peli
Paranormal Activity is the 15,000-dollar scary movie that turned into a 100-million-dollar box-office phenomenon thanks to an ingenious viral marketing campaign and word-of-mouth publicity in the United States last year. Even Steven Spielberg famously revealed he was too scared to watch the film alone at night and had to turn it off after a few minutes, only to resume watching it the next morning with his curtains wide open to allow the sunlight in.
The film, which opens in India this week, was directed by Israeli-based debutant Oren Peli, and was shot over seven days in his own home.
The plot is simple enough for a fifth-grader to follow. Katie and her boyfriend Micah are troubled by nocturnal noises in their San Diego home. To find out what it is that's going bump in the night, Micah sets up a video camera while they sleep. What we watch on screen, is the footage that was subsequently found.
Fans and critics alike have described Paranormal Activity as the Blair Witch Project of our times, and while the comparison doesn't seem entirely unfounded given that both were purported as "real discovered footage", let me be honest here, this film didn't scare me!
To be fair, some bits do thrill. Two scenes in which you see Katie awaking from her sleep and standing by for hours watching Micah sleep are genuinely eerie. As are the film's final moments which pack a hard punch. But for the most part of the film's 85-minute running time, very little happens, and you shift restlessly in your seat wondering what all the fuss is about.
It's a novel idea, no doubt, but if you ask me, both The Blair Witch Project and the much superior Cloverfield used make-believe amateur footage to much better effect.
I'm going with two-and-a-half out of five and at best an average rating for the over-hyped Paranormal Activity; it's going to take a little more effort that that to scare me. If you're easily spooked however, perhaps it may work for you. I'm still recovering from the dizziness that all the hand-held camerawork caused me!
Rating: 2.5 / 5
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