Experience “the scream”

It’s almost always a pleasant experience when I sit down at a screening, and know absolutely nothing about the movie I’m about to watch. So, walking into the screening of Paranormal Activity was a total treat, seeing that I had absolutely zero knowledge about the movie. As the movie began I was a little disappointed thinking I was watching Quarantine, or the early parts of Cloverfield. For some reason every hand-held, no budget, cheap thrills movie has to spend loads and loads of time developing the characters and establishing the fact that you’re going to be on a very “bumpy” ride for the duration.

We meet Micah and Katie in the first shot of the movie, as Micah explains why he bought the camera, for the purpose of catching something “paranormal” on it. Katie has been seeing and feeling something out of the ordinary since she was a little girl, and it seems to have followed her to their new house. Micah spends most of the homemade movie ridiculing her notions of being “haunted”, and just laughs off her claims until something is caught on his camera overnight. I’m sure the producers would like critics to keep the plot and surprises in this film to a minimum, so I will be short with the plot. Basically, a lot of nothing happens right up until the last 5 minutes of the movie.

This is a good exercise in storytelling, proving that we must learn about the protagonists before we can start to care about them.  The cheap tricks and thrills that we get at the end (startling the entire movie theater as they shrieked and screamed) would have had completely different effects on everyone had the movie been way shorter. That was the only criticism I could give this movie, its length. Many impatient viewers will become tired of the daily, diary like style Paranormal Activity plays in, but the juice is certainly worth the squeeze in this case.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 9:13 pm and is filed under 3.5, Film Reviews, Max Hope. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.