Paranormal Inactivity
Paranormal Activity: AKA Blair Witch the Redo.
Review By Jessica Dwyer
The Hollywood Hype Machine, it’s a scary thing on its own. The Hype for a film can build it up so high that it can never ever reach the heights that the Hype Machine can hang it from (a good example of this is Twilight…granted its got other factors involved.) But not since Blair Witch (which shares its hand cam style and supposed realistic background story contrivance) has a movie rode the hype like Paranormal Activity.
PA was making the film festival rounds months ago. It got a decent word of mouth, building and building until it caught the attention of Steven Spielberg who then helped it get a studio to give it a bigger release…and at his suggestion he changed the ending.
The film has been touted by MANY critics as one of the scariest films of the last years (on par with the Exorcist.) The studio used this hype along with a dangling carrot type of advertising where they asked people to DEMAND the film online to come to their city. This along with another ploy of asking to get a million requests to get the film a wide release generated more buzz.
Actually, the fact that the studio could play this sort of game to get people involved so well scared me more than the film.
And that’s where my anger comes into play…because PA is by no means the scariest film I’ve ever seen. It’s actually not that good. And the nigh on epic proportions of praise being heaped onto it make me angry, because I feel like I’ve been duped and I’m getting sick of it.
The film is supposed to be the edited together nightly (and daily) videos recording a haunting of a young couple, Micah and Katie. There are a few problems with this. Firstly, the shaky cam thing is getting old, especially when it’s SO badly used. Cloverfield wasn’t nearly this shaky. People were getting sick to their stomachs while watching it at the theater I was at. There is also the fact that shots in the film could not have been filmed by the characters because of the angles. But those are nitpicky problems…
The film should have actually started with the events that happens 2/3rds of the way through the movie. We are instead made to watch many scenes happen, and then even more scenes of the hauntees WATCHING those same scenes themselves. Wow…how scarily repetitive.
This gets old really fast. I very much enjoy character development...but this doesn’t develop anything other than a headache and a desire to go across the hall to watch Zombieland instead.
What occurs isn’t surprising as things progress. You can see the ending a mile away (even if Spielberg changed it for one that is so against the rest of the films look and style that if the overt camera jarring didn’t knock you out of the story, it will.)
Not to say that the film doesn’t have moments of brilliance that manage to shine through…but they are few and far between. (there were two instances that creeped me out) And they happen far too late in the game to save the rest of the movie which is weighted down by plot holes, stupid decisions (really you’re going to burn a cross in the fireplace when your girlfriend is being bitten and beaten by a demon?) and long moments of nothing interesting. I understand creating suspense…but like I said, watching the characters watching the scene you just saw is feels like padding (which it is.)
Don’t buy the hype. If you want to watch it, rent it. But I suggest a better haunting flick called The Entity (which is actually based off of a REAL event.)