DO NOT WATCH THE PARANORMAL ACTIVITY TRAILER!
I'm used to trailers that give away far too much. I don't even watch them any more -- I just bring my MP3 player along with me when I go the movies so I can drown them out completely. It seems the days of genuine teasers are long gone. But the trailer for Paranormal Activity goes WAY past mere spoilage. Seeing it will wreck the friggin' movie for you. Paranormal Activity is all about a slow build-up of tension to an unexpectedly shocking ending. Very little actually happens until the end. Unlike far too many horror movies, where the only suspense comes from not knowing in exactly which order each particular character is going to get messily dispatched, the dread here comes from not knowing what will happen next. You have no idea what the unknown force is capable of doing, and with each manifestation, it seems to grow a little more powerful. Whenever it shows up, you know something bad is going to happen, but you don't have a clue what it will be. All you can do is sit there and wait for it. Now that's terror.
After watching the trailer, though, you've seen the high points, so you're going to sit through all that slow build-up thinking, "Yeah, yeah, enough of this, let's start the fucking action already!" Worst of all, you'll find out that you're already seen the ending! You will in all probability walk out of the theater feeling sorely disappointed. If the filmmakers are responsible for that trailer, they deserve to have their movie go down the tubes. If they aren't, they need to find whoever made it and do horrible, horrible things to them.
After watching the trailer, though, you've seen the high points, so you're going to sit through all that slow build-up thinking, "Yeah, yeah, enough of this, let's start the fucking action already!" Worst of all, you'll find out that you're already seen the ending! You will in all probability walk out of the theater feeling sorely disappointed. If the filmmakers are responsible for that trailer, they deserve to have their movie go down the tubes. If they aren't, they need to find whoever made it and do horrible, horrible things to them.