Movie Review: Paranormal Activity

By FOX43tv.com's Film Reviewer, Stephanie Cooke

Watch the trailer!

Paranormal Activity is one of those movies that you need to see in theaters during the hype... while you still believe the hype.  And believe me, Paranormal Activity is worth the hype.

The movie is entirely shot from the perspective of Micah (a day trader) and Katie (a grad student).  They're a newly living-together couple who have discovered something going bump in the night in their San Diego home.  Micah decides to take things into his own hands and buys a video camera to try and capture whatever is going on.  The movie chronicles their days and nights as they confront doors slamming on their own, lights flicking on and off, the sounds of footsteps and bumps and bangs.

There are long stretches of time in the movie that is simply their video camera rolling on the night as Micah and Katie are in bed asleep.  These are the scariest parts of the movie.  It's not what is happening, it's the waiting for something to happen, that builds the suspense.  And when something does happen, it taps into your own fears -- the ones that unite most human beings -- that something could be there in the dark.

Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston are the main characters who play themselves.  These are the primary actors and they carry it through every believable step.  I bought them.  I bought that they were real people, living real lives, confronting something very unreal.  I'm not saying they are ready for as Oscar nomination, but I am saying they were spot on in the movie world they created.  The other actors in the film are Mark Fredrichs who plays a psychic called in to help them get rid of whatever, and Amber Armstrong and Ashley Palmer add a couple of bit supporting parts. 

The film was directed, written and edited by Oren Peli.   He managed to stay true to the theory that Micah and Katie shot every bit of the film.  Some of the scarier shots could have been vastly overdone if Hollywood's special effects machine got a hold of them, but they didn't, and the movie is all the better for it.  Peli creates drama, suspense, and believable situations that seemed as real as you would expect if they happened in your own home, before your own eyes.

Peli has managed to do something with about $11,000 that many directors in Hollywood can't pull off with budgets 1000 times that, and that is genuinely scare the bejeezus out of people.  This movie is not about gore, or slashers, or idiots who don't know when to run.  It's about seemingly real people with whom the audience can identify.

Is this a perfect movie?  Not really.  There were a few unbelievable things that didn't have to happen, and their presence in the movie briefly reminded me that this is a completely fictitious story. Could it have used a little better pacing?  Yes.  At times there seemed to be something missing and some slower transitions could have picked up the pace.  But the mundaneness of their everyday lives also seemed to help you believe the story.  I've heard some critics and moviegoers discount this movie as all hype and no scare.  I have no idea what those people were watching.