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Like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity is an impressive and harrowing indie chiller that derives much of its terror--and there is quite a bit of that in its brief running time--by playing on the most basic of human fears: that which cannot be seen. Though one might assume that the point-of-view aesthetic had been worn out thanks to Cloverfield and Quarantine (and, lest one forgets, Blair Witch), Paranormal makes excellent use of the single-camera technique, which helps to not only…
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Last updated: December 16, 2009, 6:10 pm
Paranormal Activity Customer reviews:
Average Rating: 3.5 Total Reviews: 115
(Brian "Andrea" Davis, 2009-12-14) This movie is the worst movie I have ever seen. I made the mistake of going to the movie theater to see it and was completly disappointed. It wasn't scary at all. I have seen Disney movies scarier than this load of garbage. The only reason I gave it 1 star is because you can't rate anything lower than that. Save your money and your time don't buy this movie or bother to watch it.
(The Doctor, 2009-12-12) This is an extremely mediocre horror movie that's actually pretty boring. So what's all the hype about? Well, I believe that the hype comes from the fact that they really don't make horror movies any more. They make silly "made you jump" movies, torture porn, slashers and horror/comedies, but not movies that rely on mood and pacing to creep the audience out rather than going the simple route (special effects being the simple route). There are of course those very rare exceptions (such as Session 9 and Pontypool) but by and large they really don't make horror films any more. The biggest problem with Paranormal Activity is that it could have VERY EASILY been much better. As is, the story really doesn't develop at all, and, as such, it gets old after the first half. All they needed was better writing. Here's how it should have gone: I would have had the husband sprinkle baby powder around the door and in their room. In the morning he could have learned that something indeed had entered the room from the hallway. This should have raised the question, where is this thing coming from? That night, he should have done the same, but this time spread baby powder all over the upstairs hallway. In the morning they could have discovered that the steps are coming out of one of the guest bedrooms. He then would sprinkle baby power all over that room, and re-sprinkle the stuff as he walked backwards to his own bedroom. You get the idea. This would have culminated with the couple discovering that every night, something is coming out of the closet in the far guest bedroom and walking into their room. The wife also starts acting strange, like she knows more about what it is than the husband. The husband asks her why she isn't more afraid and she says, "We shouldn't worry, he's bothering us. He won't bother us any more soon." When he asks her how she could possibly know this she says, "I just know." The final baby powder scene could have been the husband making sure that the floor of the guest bedroom, the hallway and the entire floor of their bedroom was covered with the stuff. It would have been a great scene to see them, already in bed, sprinkling baby powder all around them on the floor, and then setting the bottles on the night stand. Their discovery should have been that something is coming out of the guest bedroom closet, walking up the hall, entering their room and stopping at the wife's side of the bed. There then could have been a scene where the husband wakes up alone, and discovers his wife sleeping on the floor of the guest bedroom closet! A later revelation would have been that the closet wasn't going far enough, for there is a door in the closet ceiling and the thing is actually coming down from the attic and out of the closet every night. The wife should have then started doing slightly odd things, making the husband distrustful. From then on, whenever he analyzes the tapes from the night before, they play for a while, the bedroom door is shown opening on its own, and then the camera shuts off. Whatever it is is turning the camera off so that the husband can't see what's actually happening at night. He gets the idea that his wife and this thing are somehow connected. He gets the idea that if he sets up a second camera that his wife doesn't know about that this thing won't know about it either. So he sets the second camera up. The next morning he wakes up and his wife is gone. He calls her name, he goes in the guest bedroom, looks in the closet and even goes up into the attic. Nothing. He checks the garage and sees that their car is still there. He checks the yard. Nothing. He looks back up to their bedroom and decides to check the footage from the first camera. Standing by the side of their bed he rewinds camera one and watches the footage right there on the camera's screen. The same thing happens around the same time of night---the bedroom door is shown opening on its own and right after that the camera shuts off. Still in their bedroom, he grabs camera two---the camera his wife didn't know about---and watches that camera's footage on its little screen. The bedroom door opens and the comforter shifts as the invisible thing walks around the bed. The covers on the wife's side are pulled back. And then his wife gets up. She walks around to the husband's side of the bed and stands there--for hours. The husband can see himself sleeping in bed on the camera and his wife standing their watching him with a malicious grin on her face. A couple of times the camera shows him having trouble breathing, like sleep apnea, and shows his wife standing there and giggling at this. A couple hours later the wife nods, as though in response to something. The camera shows her leave the bedroom and descend the stairs. She returns to the room with a knife---and goes into their closet and shuts the door. The husband keeps watching the footage, anxiously, franticly. The camera shows that she just stays in the closet as he sleeps, with the door shut. Right as the revelation hits him the husband spins around 180 to the closet, right as the closet door swings open and his wife, already running full speed, flies out of the closet towards him with the knife, shrieking an inhuman shriek. The camera falls to the floor, facing them. It records them, sideways, as she stabs him to death and then stands over his dead body. She drops the knife and says. She then looks to her side and says, "He won't bother us anymore." She then turns and walks out of the bedroom. It looks like she's holding someone's hand. She goes down the hall into the guest bedroom. The door closes. The end. Would have been SOOO much better.
(J. Stockslader, 2009-12-11) We saw this movie in the theater, which was a really good way to see it, but I'm guessing that watching it in a dark house would be phenomenal! The beginning of the movie had to establish the characters, so it was a bit boring. You really had to use your imagination through the first half of the movie, and I think it is more the IDEA that something could happen was more of the fear factor. That said, the movie was pretty intense in some parts, and I literally screamed LOUDLY at one point, which is not something I have done in a movie theater before. There are a lot of comparisons between this and Blair Witch, and I can see that. However, Blair Witch had a lot more action in the evening scenes, and I was too afraid to actually scream out when I saw that one in the theater. I love scary movies, and to find one that is unique and you don't know what is going to happen next, it is a real treasure. For those who are scary movie fanatics, this movie is a must-own.
(Dwayne J, 2009-12-11) I have never in my life hated a movie or a video game or anything so badly that I gave it a ZERO. Paranormal Activity changed that. (Okay, technically I gave it a 1, but that's only because the scale doesn't go all the way down to zero. In my mind, I just gave it a zero because there's nothing good about this movie.) The movie was absolutely terrible. I was bored out of my mind for the entire movie. Half the scenes in the movie were the two main characters (a couple) bickering (and no one pays for a horror movie to see people bicker--unless they die as a result of or shortly after they bicker). The other half of the scenes (the ones that were supposed to be scary) was just sitting around for a few minutes waiting for something to happen. And then something incredibly lame (on the order of furniture moving by itself) would happen. I actually found myself checking my watch every few minutes to see how much longer I'd have to suffer through this. (30 minutes into the movie, I considered walking out of the movie as a result of the excruciating boredom, but I decided against it since I was here with friends and they needed to give me a ride home.) The "scary" scenes themselves were pretty underwhelming. Aside from the fact that they were so few and so short and so lame, they were completely predictable, completely cliche. Every "scary" thing that happened I could see coming from a mile away, and my reaction was more of "seriously, that's the best they could come up with?" rather than one of fear. The sole exception, the one time when something happened that I didn't expect, it actually amused me to the point that I burst out in laughter. Only the most sheltered of people would find this stuff scary. Either that or people who come in with the mindset of wanting or expecting to be scared. But someone in that mindset could also be scared by your friendly neighbor saying "hi". The movie has been described to me by multiple sources as "weird sounds in the middle of the night". Yeah, I hear weird sounds at night every frickin' night, and I'm still not scared. Maybe if a monster jumped out and dragged me out of my bed, then I'd be scared. But I'd be scared of getting dragged out of my bed by a monster with or without this movie. Maybe all of this garbage would have been worth it if there was a nice payoff at the end. But no, the payoff was literally in the last few seconds of the movie. And to top it off, that payoff was something I'd already predicted as soon as the movie began. Now don't misunderstand me. I love horror movies. I even enjoy the really really bad ones. But even I hated Paranormal Activity. It was painfully boring, predictable to the point of cliche, and simply not scary at all. I'll even take a page from the book of Comic Book Guy and call it the Worst Movie Ever. I don't regret it, though. I actually love writing reviews about grossly overrated pieces of entertainment where I just completely trash them. And Paranormal Activity gave me that opportunity.
(vitajex, 2009-12-10) = SPOILERS= This low-budget thriller is occassionally effective, occassionally inane. Most of the film's problems stem from the male character, Micah. It is obvious that the story needs to be propelled, however, his actions often lack the authenticity the film so desperately relies on. Micah quickly becomes a caricature of skepticism and male bravado. He begins, understandably enough, as dismissive of his girlfriend Katie's story of a lifetime of haunting, but as the story goes on, his stubborn refusal to allow her to bring in outside help becomes unrealistic. Even after seeing irrefutable physical evidence of an entity around them, he continues to assert that he should be the one to protect his girlfriend. Even as he continues to profess a form of cynicism, he actively, and against his girlfriend's EXPRESS wishes, attempts to communicate with the entity, predominantly through juvenile taunting and a Ouija board. This Ouija board plot thread is completely pointless as it adds nothing to the story and actually serves to weaken it, as Micah attempts to explain that the 'demon' wants to inexplicably 'warn them'... about itself(?). The dialogue is mostly improvised, and this fact is sometimes distractingly clear. The ending also leaves a little to be desired, as it resorts to the old 'The killer was never found!' trope to leave the audience's nerves on end as they leave the theater. With that said, the film is very admirable in its ability to conjure tension and suspense with no latex or CGI beasties. The film has drawn a lot of comparisons to 'The Blair Witch Project' and many are valid. However, I saw 'The Blair Witch Project' a couple of months before it was released widely, and as such, had heard nothing about it. As I sat in the theater, I suspected it was fiction, but was never convinced. I imagine, even if I had heard nothing about 'Paranormal Activity', my disbelief would not have been suspended for nearly as long.