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Visual:		6.0
Audio:		8.0
Acting:		9.0
Writing:		5.0
Score:		8.0

Director(s):	Oren Peli
Writer(s):	Oren Peli
Starring:	Katie Featherston • Micah Sloat
Genre:	Horror
Website:	http://www.paranormalactivity-movie.com/
Release Date:	September 25, 2009
Rated:

Paranormal Activity begins with a title card thanking Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat and the San Diego Police Department for the access to the footage. No studio logos, no titles. When it ends, there is no credit, just the copyright slide. Basically, they maintain the illusion that this is edited footage, not a production. An easier feat when the two actors involved are total unknowns who haven't really done anything else known to people since they shot this film. Their names, by the way, are Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat—essentially playing themselves.

This movie is movie as pure entertainment—as in, it commits to the “found footage” gimmick and spends its entire length focused on scare scenes. It has one objective, and that is to liberate urine from your bladder. Its story is purposely half-baked to be ambiguous and its characters' personalities are about as developed as watching someone’s random video blog. The attention remains on the haunting throughout, which adds to its effectiveness as a 99-minute video to freak people out, but not as a film in its full capacity.

The premise is simple. Katie has had an entity following her since she was a toddler. The visits have been getting worse lately, but she now lives with her day trader boyfriend Micah, who has the bright idea of buying a high-end camera and set it up to record what happens at night when they’re asleep. What they discover is not… for the faint of heart.

It’s initially an updated version of The Haunting, where the scares are limited to playful noises and faulty wiring. Then it escalates, and it’s like watching a torture video. Not physical torture, but emotional torture. We’re essentially watching two people completely break down from extreme fear over an extended period of time. The emotional anchor of the film is Katie, who loses her marbles by the minute. Just as we enter the last third of the film, she cries in Micah’s arms, “I’m so f--king tired of this,” and we sympathize. It’s a nightmare to have it happen night after night, robbing you of any rest even in the comfort of your own bed. That the "it" is an invisible being who wants to harm you doesn't help, either.

Micah, on the other hand, comes off as an understandable dick. He’s the film’s defense mechanism at first, making jokes about the situation to beat the audience to the punch. As things get more dangerous, Micah reverts to that guy complex that compels him to taunt the entity in order to make himself look tough (is it for the girl or the camera?), gradually making things worse. He even seems offended by the idea of Katie asking help from psychics. But that’s how it is with some guys. Paranormal Activity is the horror movie version of a couple lost on the road and the guy’s refusing to ask for directions. Perfect conflict for what’s basically a two-person play.

Is it creepy? Yes, definitely, and much more effective at handling the first-person gimmick than The Blair Witch Project—the movie it’s indubitably being compared to by everyone. While that little phenomena tried too hard to maintain a sense of realism and vague peril, Paranormal Activity actually tries to be a horror movie; with a masterfully deliberate sense of pacing and freaky paranormal stuff happening at frequent intervals. Malicious stuff, not just furniture moving or rocks piling in front of a tent.

I attended a special screening of the film with a raucous midnight crowd that ended at 3 AM. In short, the movie scared the living bowels out of them. As we all shuffled out of the theater, I overheard a group of men discussing the idea of sleeping together for the night. I also saw a poor girl in tears, staring blankly ahead, stiff and obviously too terrified to even get up from her seat. That’s when I decided that I should probably wait overnight to write my reaction, to see if I would really get any nightmares. I didn’t, but thinking back on the movie, I’m still pretty sure at least half the people in that theater did. Or at least couldn’t sleep.

The brilliance of Paranormal Activity is that it asks, “What happens when you sleep?” Several of the occurrences here, the couple never even realize until they watch the video in the morning. It instills into the audience the idea that while you’re blissfully in dreamland, something freaky could be happening right next to your bed. You don’t need to believe in the paranormal to acknowledge how effective it is as a device. For that reason, I cannot wait until this movie is out on DVD. The conceit would fit a home video format better, mainly because you can then watch it in a quiet house, in the dead of night, alone or with a small group of friends. After all, it’s only a movie.

Right?