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Sigh, Paranormal Activity didn't scare me at all. *SPOLIERS*
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Before I start, let me say that for those of you who have yet to see Paranormal Activity, and still plan to, should avert their eyes from this article and go read an incredibly wry and witty Perez Hilton blog or something for now. I'm going to spoil the hell out of this movie.
Ok. So, apparently Paranormal Activity is the number one movie in the country right now. I've been hearing nothing but good things about this damn flick for two years; it's about time they released it to theatres. I actually wrote about the film briefly in an article called “The 20 (Greatest) Underseen Horror Films of the 2000s” a couple months back. It kind of seems stupid now for Paranormal Activity to be featured on a list of underseen movies, but this shows how quickly things started happening. I remember writing the article, then visiting the movie's website (which looked like it had been idle for two years) and emailing the director asking, "Is there any way I can get this movie on DVD?" because at that point, I was very doubtful that anything was going to happen to the film, other than be shelved and collect dust.
The story behind its release is a long and tumultuous one. It all started with the film being featured at such festivals as Screamfest and Slamdance in 2007, and generating buzz that way. Eventually, Paramount bought the film and said, "We're going to remake this, and won't release the original until the remake comes out." Then somehow Steven Spielberg (yes, that Spielberg) picked up the film, and decided to release the original to theatres, but demanded they change the ending. And the rest history.
After two years of waiting, I finally saw the film...
And I was slightly underwhelmed.
I know, I know. Maybe I built it up way too much in my head, but that's giving the filmmaker too much credit. Look. I tried to like it. I really did. I went in there excited as all hell and expected to die of fright.
Before I go off on a tangent of Negative Nancy-isms, let me at least give you a list of pros.
I whole-heartedly appreciate its "less is more" tactics. I love a film that is so confident in scaring you that it doesn't need to be all spectacle and no atmosphere. I feel that if a horror film can scare you with nothing on the screen, you're doing something right. The film also utilized things that you hadn't really seen before in mainstream cinema, like a character getting out of bed and just standing in place for two hours and not ever moving. It's creepy. This is something that is lacking in modern horror.
Ok. Now the cons.
[EDIT: Reading this article after I published it, I never realized just how hilarious the segue, or lack thereof, of my scarce list of pros to my dissertation of negativity really is. I apologize for such a thing. Please continue.]
I love being sucked into a movie so much that I don't even acknowledge my surroundings. I'm just so glued to the characters and the story that I feel as though I'm actually there. This did not happen with Paranormal Activity, and the reason for that is the characters were too damn sarcastic and witty. They were cracking jokes so much, the audience was laughing more than screaming. And that, my friend, is the last thing you want people to do in a horror film. By the time we saw Katie, the woman being heckled by a demon, standing over the bed in an incredibly creepy fashion while she was still sleeping, people were laughing at her (or, rather, they thought they were laughing with her, in some odd way). The reason for that is we've got to know Katie on a very personal level, so much so that when we see her do something, we just think it's funny... because the film has shown her as being just that. Have you ever known someone so well that when they do something as mundane as, say, open a box of cereal, you laugh? And when someone asks you why you laughed such a thing, you're only response is, "Because it's Carl." Yeah, that's how I felt about Katie and her boyfriend Micah. They prohibited me from ever being in creep mode.
The film also fell into a very monotonous structure, where you were fully able to predict what scene was going to follow the previous one. The pattern of scenes were as follows: Hand-held interaction between Micah and Katie / Static night surveillance / Hand-held interaction / Night surveillance / Hand-held interaction / Night surveillance / Hand-held interaction / Night surveillance... and so on an so forth. Once I realized that, really, the only scary stuff happened during those stationary shots watching the two sleep in their bed, I began to grow bored of their conversations during the day and looked forward to the nighttime scenes because I knew that something, not only something creepy, but just something would happen. Even after a while, the creepy stuff that did happen grew tiresome. How many times do we need to hear the same footsteps come up the stairs and see the same shadow appear on their door before we start checking our watches?
The whole time I was watching the film, I was saying to myself, "This makes me want to watch The Blair Witch Project right now." I say this beacause A) The Blair Witch Project already tackled the shaky-camera-documentary style of film, and B) they did it better. Ultimately, Paranormal Activity would have worked better as a real movie (not a documentary) as it's always hard for me to believe the logic behind a character feeling compelled to document life-threatening events, such as the case with Cloverfield. Given these characters' situations, why would they purposely (and willingly, mind you) remember to grab the camera when they set it down from taking a break from... oh... RUNNING FOR THEIR LIVES? Videotaping that crap is the last thing I'd want to do when my life is at stake. The reason The Blair Witch Project succeeded is because the gimmick worked in context to what the characters were doing. They were documentarians. They were filming a story about the Blair Witch legend. All the creepy stuff that occured were thought to have been linked to the very thing they were making a film about. Plus, the camera acted as flashlights to pitch-black woods they tented in. We, as an audience, accepted the style as a function, and not only as a gimmick. Sure, you may say that Micah is a documentarian himself, since he is documenting a paranormal case centered around his girlfriend. This is all fine in dandy, but what doesn't work for me is when he decides to grab the camera after he realizes his girlfriend is in danger. It just seems like he's trying to move the story along for a film, rather than react like a normal human being. This is where the gimmick hurts the film, as opposed to help it. When you set one camera up in the bedroom, and an action happens in another room, you have to compensate for that.
And lastly, can we please talk about the ending? I actually woke up the next morning pissed off. Seriously. It was one of the stupidest things I'd ever seen. And that says a lot. Not since the little-blonde-haired kid in Eli Roth's Cabin Fever, who did some stupid karate kick in slo-mo then yokelishly mutter for some pancakes, have I ever been so pissed off at a film. The launching of Micah into the camera from ten feet away and shattering the lens, then Katie's face turning into a cartoon demon was shameful. It was a cheap scare and totally did not work in context to the rest of the film. First of all, as I said earlier in this article, the film used subtleties to make you feel eerie. The ending stuck out like a sore thumb because it employed things that had not been consistent with the style of the first hour and a half of the film. And the CGI? C'mon. The film used little to no CGI and then that plastic surgery disaster of a face appears? Seems a little out of place, if you ask me. And this was Spielberg's idea. So, thanks Steve.
Anyhoodles, the bottom line is I've seen better, but I've also seen worse. Though, I don't think that was the case with the crowd I saw it with. You can either take my opinion or the 14-year old who sat behind me and exclaimed, "Oh my God! That ending was sooooo cool!"
At least I didn't hate the film, which is a rare occurance for me with modern horror. I guess it was either this or The Stepfather remake, and don't even get me started on remakes...
If you haven't seen the film, I recommend downloading the original version that was shown at Screamfest online. Watch it alone in your house for full effect, and see the better ending.
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