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The effectiveness of any horror film depends solely on how much an audience is willing to be a victim of the director's intent. Buy the notion of Satan invading a small girl in order to challenge a Priest and The Exorcist becomes one of the most terrifying films ever made. If you don't, then it's just some dumb-ass preacher with vomit on his collar. So it is with Paranormal Activity. Accept that you're watching 'found' footage a la The Blair Witch Project and this is one demonically creepy chiller. If you don't, and by the time you're sitting comfortably in a movie theatre there is no reason you should, then it has boiled down to a poorly produced You Tube stunt.
Young suburbanites Katie and Micha live in a house where things go bump in the night. Katie is convinced it's a ghost, Micha decides to document everything on camera to solve the riddle. They talk, they argue, they sleep and things do go bump in the strangest way, especially once they get a Ouija board. Demons, it seems, don't like Ouija boards. And it's all caught on video.
Remember the viral email with a cheery pastoral scene shockingly interrupted by some freaky noise and an adrenaline surge? That's Paranormal Activity. Lots and lots of nothing, then a door slams or a TV turns itself on. American audiences jumped, the hype built and now everyone's queued up a for a slice of the action. Accepting that this film was no more 'found' than Cloverfield, what you've got is an underwritten, averagely acted and crudely produced film whose tension is imported from hyped-up shout-lines on the poster.
Kind of fun on YouTube, but that's all. Producers are laughing all the way to the bank. Audiences are duped out of hard earned for the sake of a few cheap thrills, amusement park style. Shot on a micro-budget, some say a mere $10k, Paranormal Activity has so far pulled in over $100m. And that's the real story, the marketing con of a lifetime.
// COLIN FRASER
moviereview colin fraser film movie australia review critic flicks