Paranormal Activity
Unlike the Blair Witch Project, this do-it-yourself, lost camera footage horror flick is surprisingly...watchable. The plot revolves around a young couple in a too-nice house videotaping themselves sleeping because they have the craziest of fetishes and...oh, no. Wait. They are looking to capture ghost stuff, just like on that SciFi SyFy show with the noises and the cheap scares and silly commercial breaks! The female half of our intrepid duo is Kate, a meek, un-fun being that forgot to mention a sadistic demon-ghost burnt down her childhood home and breathed bad breath on her many times before moving in with other half...let's call him Asshole Micah. See, Micah, he's an asshole. He bought an expensive camera to tape ghosts, but we all know he just wants some freaky horizontal time. Also, he is an asshole to ghosts. If ever ghosts gathered in a farmer's field with pitchforks and torches, they'd be marching to hurt Asshole Micah. And rightfully so. The movie is slow during the day, and then ghost stuff happens at night, with each night getting worse and worse. I liked the dark times, and enjoyed just how much the movie suggests rather than shows. My kind of horror, actually.
But then we come to a problem: the movie has to end. We can't just keep watching. By night 1,086 of door closing and pancake footprints we'd be finger-loving our own eyes out. The ghost parts are good fun and not really scary (more so odd), but Paranormal Activity must end. Oftentimes, true life ghost stories don't end. You either no longer notice the haunting or the haunting no longer gives an ectoplasm about you. Such is life afterlife. But the movie has to end on a bang as per the Hollywood contract, section 4B, mini-section 4B.c3.IIIV, and within ONE NIGHT good ol' Kate "I Hate to Wait" becomes possessed, evil, and far more interesting. Commence stabbing and dum dum dum "What do we have here?" moments. Meh.
I'd have rather liked a long shot of Kate and Micah crying until the sun came up and then abandoning ship, but Paranormal Activity was still pretty good. Neat tricks. And no handheld cam headache this time! At that, my friends, might be its greatest triumph.