Paranormal Activity

This is the kind of movie that’s easy to love or hate. The plot is ridiculously simple, the cinematography non-existent, the dialogue basically improvised. In essence, it’s a low-budget remake of Poltergeist without special effects. Much of the time nothing happens, and half the time we’re watching two people sleep. Having said that, the Cricket is leaning towards giving this a tentative thumbs-up, because within this sparse set-up director Oren Peli and his two main actors, Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, are able to pull you in. It really is a worthy feat that you won’t be bored for a minute. The tension builds up rapidly, even if you can see through all the clichés. At first little things are moved in Katie and Micah’s house; then doors open and close; they hear strange noises; footsteps on the stairs; lights go on and off; the chandelier swings on the ceiling in the middle of the night; Katie gets out of bed standing in the bedroom for hours in a catatonic state. Micah shares the audience rational skepticism about paranormal activities, ghost and demons, and he has a hard time empathizing with his girlfriend’s fear for the inexplicable occurrences around the house. He has set up an audio-visual system hoping to capture whatever is plaguing Katie. At first he jokes it’s probably one of the neighbors. He is not particularly receptive to a psychic who Katie invited. He refuses to admit that he is starting to get scared, too, and acts as if he is dealing with the schoolyard bully. He just wants to protect his girlfriend.

I’m no fan of the Blair-Witch faux-documentary style, with the bouncing camera, as if we are watching real footage. But it does add to the effect-free allure. It all makes it easy identifying with the two main characters. We’ve all heard strange noises, and we are all spooked out sometimes by inexplicable occurrences. The interaction between Katie and Micah is easily recognizable, too, as many of us will know someone who’s a little more gullible about the supernatural. And what if you were in their position? Wouldn’t you flip the freak out? The film cleverly taps into our fear of the unknown. How would you react? Would you try to record every demonic move and utterance, taunt forces beyond your control, would you run and hide, or call an exorcist in desperation? Micah hopes to communicate with the pestering ghost through an Ouija board, but merely gets the name Diane or Nadine as reply. Searching the internet, he finds a story about a woman who experienced all the same incidents as Katie, invited an exorcist and died. You know where this is going. Alas, the ending disappoints. Not surprisingly, there are actually three endings in circulation – and none of them are profound. And that illustrates my hesitation, there’s no message, no subtext, hardly any metatext, no substance – just two people being scared to death.