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Oren Peli, Paranormal Activity
10/26/2009 Remember 1999, when The Blair Witch Project was all the rage, with critics and audiences alike calling it one of the scariest things ever? Remember when you finally saw it, and it didn’t even come close to matching the hype it had accumulated? Well, it’s déjà vu all over again. I will admit, I don’t really scare too easily when it comes to movies, but I’m not impossible. Seeing cute little Regan do a spider-walk down the stairs with her head facing the other way still keeps me from popping in The Exorcist at night. And seeing Donnie Wahlberg in his underwear from The Sixth Sense is disturbing at any time of the day. But sometimes I have to wonder if there are audience members who want so badly to be frightened that a movie barely has to even make an effort to elicit a response. Paranormal Activity had a great deal of potential. It starts of with Katie (Katie Featherston) and Micah (Micah Sloat) planning to record the strange happenings of the night. So it appears, we might assume, that we won’t have to wait long to start getting scared. But the film does what most horror films do in the first half: it teases. The initial incidents aren’t exactly jaw-dropping. Keys end up on the floor, and a door opens slightly before closing again. I can understand the slow buildup. I mean, an effective thriller has to gradually prepare you for a successful heart attack. But what’s frustrating isn’t just the delayed shocks you’ve readied yourself for that don’t come. It’s having to re-watch those same scenes over again as Micah plays them for his girlfriend on his computer. We’ve already seen them. They weren’t scary before, and they’re not now. Many people have issues with sitting through films that don’t have likable leads. Personally, I would prefer to root for the protagonists, but I’ve seen plenty of movies I liked (There Will Be Blood, Monster’s Ball, The French Connection) whose main characters weren’t exactly rays of sunshine. Stupid characters are another story. At first, both Katie and Micah are easy enough to like. Their relationship feels authentic, and they seem like people many of us might know. But it doesn’t take long for that to change. Micah is a bullheaded alpha male who isn’t gonna let some demon terrorize his girlfriend and him without a fight. He constantly calls the spirit out, and even when he’s warned not to, he gets a Ouija board. I don’t know about you, but it’s a little hard to care too much for what happens to someone who begs for a serious wakeup call. Katie’s no rocket scientist either. She’s not nearly as annoying as her boyfriend, but she continues to allow him to make dumb decisions when it’s clear his plans won’t work. Micah doesn’t exactly hide that his goal is to capture something “golden” on his camera. Does that sound like someone with the best intentions? As was the case with District 9, I wouldn’t call this a bad movie by any means. It’s definitely interesting, and it’ll give couples moving in together something to think about before making it official. But just like the summer sci-fi picture, my major issue lies with the film failing to match its enormous hype. In the last few minutes of the film, we finally start to get the shocks and thrills we were waiting for. If only more moments that effective had made their way into the movie at earlier spots in time. Now that would have been truly terrifying. Comments [post a comment]
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Friday, February 10, 2012
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