Movie review: Paranormal Activity

"Horror" is such a broad genre that I feel uncomfortable, generally, admitting how much I really and truly enjoy horror movies - mostly because this admission immediately conjures up images of Jason and Freddy and Chucky and all those things that I actually don't like about horror movies.

When I lived in Atlanta, a regular ritual each Fall was to walk up the street to the Haunted House at Agnes Scott College. This was a kid-friendly affair, short on gore and long on spooky atmosphere. I preferred this sort of Halloween affair because it allowed me to get the adrenaline rush without dangerously spiking my post-traumatic stress disorder - the best of all worlds.

A little chill up the spine and lots of spooky atmosphere is what I enjoy. I like it when the experience gets into my head and not just my gut. These days, though, that's a rare find. M. Night Shyamalan's early films definitely qualified - I couldn't sleep for several nights after my first viewing of Signs - and there have been others. For the most part, however, I have pretty much given up on Hollywood feeding my enjoyment of the horror genre.

And, it turns out, Hollywood didn't - at least this time. A couple nights ago Kira and I went to the local theater to see Paranormal Activity, an extraordinarily effective film shot on the lowest of budgets (under $20,000) and the smallest of crews (including cast, it was about seven people). What the film lacked in production budget, however, it more than compensated for in imagination, story and overall chills. This movie gets into your head.

The movie presents itself as a simple assemblage of footage found in a camera after an "event," that took place in the house and the lives of a young couple, Katy and Micah. There is no narration, and no narrative (at least on the surface). Instead, the editing of the movie follows the mere "documentation" of these events through the lens of the video camera Micah purchased to get to the bottom of the noises waking them up in the middle of the night.

As the footage unfolds, we learn, piece by piece, that there is a lot more at work (and at stake) in these events than merely a creaking and settling house. There is an entity at work, and it is not friendly.

It is clear from the start that the movie borrows from the "found footage" trope of movies like The Blair Witch Project. To simply dismiss this as a copycat, however, is to miss the creepy effectiveness of this technique across decades of the genre. Blair Witch did not invent the "found footage" trope. Though the movie used it to terrifying effectiveness, you can find precursors in such gems as John Carpenter's The Prince of Darkness, and the little-known but very suspenseful and creepy nuclear-nightmare TV movie from 1983 called Special Bulletin. There is something about grainy video and point-of-view filming that gears our brains to feel like we are right in the thick of the action.

Being in the thick of it results in exactly the sort of seriously creepy spine-tingles I was talking about earlier. To be merely scary is pretty easy. BOO!, and your hiccups are gone. Done. However, to be eerie and chilling is a trickier demand. Paranormal Activity pulls it off in spades, however. It succeeds by taking everyday activities and objects - sleeping, domestic life in a suburban condominium, and young love - and rendering it uncanny.

The performances are perfectly understated. Both the Katy and Micah characters are played by relatively unknown actors who seem very natural and real. This, coupled with the "found footage" approach, lends heavily to the "this is really happening" vibe. Both the characters are even more believable for the traits each reveals as the events get weirder. Katy becomes more bitchy and whiny, and Micah tries hard to "alpha male" his way through the haunting. Neither approach works, but both add an air of truthfulness to the documentation. We are seeing people under stress and unguarded; the makeup is off. It does not make them more sympathetic characters, but it does get us even more involved as viewers in the immediacy of the moment.

What I found most interesting were the questions raised about the act of observation itself. As the film progresses, you get the subtle indication that this entity, whatever it is, knows that it is being filmed. Whether Micah's camera provokes anger or exhibitionism on the part of the intruder, it is arguable that things got a lot worse once the camera got involved. There's a media studies thesis in there somewhere, for your grad students reading this. For the rest of us, it makes for one hell of an effective movie.

Thanks to a well-handled viral marketing campaign, this film is now in theaters nationwide. I recommend going to see it on the big screen - it is worth it. Moreover, the experience of being around other folks getting creeped outta their gourds is kinda neat. So yeah, go see it in the theater, definitely.

But I also recommend going earlier in the day. This is one film you don't want hanging over your head when you go home to turn out the lights.