Paranormal Activity

[toys2cool]

I wasnt impressed either, I thought it was boring.
The end was cool, but by the time it got to the end I was so bored and ready to go it was an anticlimax. This is a good example of a crap film being overhyped so it makes money.
And If I was one of the writers of the Blair Witch Id be calling my lawyer right about now................
trey

I'm guessing I should wait for the DVD ?

[megozilla13]

The Blair Witch was ruined at the final cut when the film makers decided, based on feedback from audiences that previewed it, that everything had to be explained. I previewed the film before it was finished, and saw it again when it was released. The changes made, though small, I felt ruined the film.

mikej

[fallensaviour]

Truth be told I thought the blair witch sucked donkey sauce!!!
It wasn't scary at all,I've camped alone zillions of times.The biggest thing to make me mad was how stupid they were.

Not sure if I'll waste the $8 plus popcorn.I'll wait until it comes out for rental.I'm not getting burned again.

[toys2cool]

Truth be told I thought the blair witch sucked donkey sauce!!!
It wasn't scary at all,I've camped alone zillions of times.The biggest thing to make me mad was how stupid they were.

Not sure if I'll waste the $8 plus popcorn.I'll wait until it comes out for rental.I'm not getting burned again.

lol! here's it's $10.50 the hell with that

[ctc]

>The biggest thing to make me mad was how stupid they were.

HAW! I agree.... and it was a point that lost me some friends. HOW do you get lost WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE OF A FREEWAY??!!?

Natural Selection is a wonderful thing....

Don C.

[lepage]

I think Darklord is right. This film relies on a large, reacting, audience. So it's not the film that makes you jump, it's that sudden scream you hear behind you in the audience.I remember when Blair witch came out. One of our distributors had gone and seen it when it first came out and he said it was scarey as hell. I watched Blair witch on dvd and was so dissapointed that I demanded my money back.
My buddy said "but I lent it to you".

[boynightwing]

I saw this two nights back. I woke up at 4am that night thinking about the possibility that something could be in my room. It took an hour to convince myself nothing was there.

I enjoyed the movie. To me its like a friend telling a really good ghost story.

I work at a movie theater so I got to see it for free. Having said that, to this day I have not seen a single trailer for it. I didn't know it existed until I was programing film codes a week before the show came out. I think its cool that we offered midnight shows for it all weekend but at the same time...I was the one working it so I was stuck at work till well after 2am. Which is not so fun.

[kennermike]

Truth be told I thought the blair witch sucked donkey sauce!!!
It wasn't scary at all,I've camped alone zillions of times.The biggest thing to make me mad was how stupid they were.

Not sure if I'll waste the $8 plus popcorn.I'll wait until it comes out for rental.I'm not getting burned again.

Your Right about one Thing Blair Witch Sucked Donkey Balls!! its 10 years later and Im still trying to get the bad taste out of my mouth .these arent movies let alone films they are gimmicks if it sells it sells .Paranormal Activities is no different will never pay to see this or even watch it on free tv.I do give the Director credit for making it for $ 16,000 but thats it.

[draconianguard]

The only thing great about this film was the marketing. Paranormal Craptivity was a waste of time and money. How much did bloody-digusting.com get paid to say "The scariest film ever made?" It seems like the people that enjoyed this don't normally watch horror movies and only went due to the hype.

[fallensaviour]

My wife and her friend just watched it last night...They were not impressed and not scared at all said the theatre was packed as well.65-70 percent of the people were not impressed.
She said it was a real rip of Blair witch type film.
If you can't scare two girls then I don't know what to think...
She said it tries to make you think more than give you visual frights but she was unimpressed.
She was mored scared of drag me to hell than this one.

[darklord1967]

It seems like the people that enjoyed this don't normally watch horror movies and only went due to the hype.

That's not fair. As a 42 year old former film major and horror fan I have seen a LOT of horror films... American and foreign. So my favorable opinion of this film does not exist with an ignorance of really good classic horror films to fall back on.

Horror means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. This was a different, much more subtle approach to horror that did NOT rely on blood, guts, gore, or CGI FX. It therefore felt much more grounded in reality, and it had a greater ring of truth to it (for those of us with an interest in actual paranormal activity cases).

For today's generation of film-goers, with their limited attention spans, they have GREAT DIFFICULTY focusing on a film like this because "nothing scary happens in the first 5 minutes". I've seen the film 3 times now. The amount of chatting, giggling, and texting from the younger viewers during the first half of this movie is mind-boggling to me!

This is the same group that likely does NOT find a film like The Excorsist frightening (and instead considers it amusing) because "nothing scary happens in the first 5 minutes". 12 year old Regan McNeil doesn't begin to show her first signs of demonic possession in that film until about 33 minutes into it (during a routine medical exam to diagnose her "hyper-kinetic behavior"). And the scenes of her more horrific manifestations of demonic possession don't begin until about 53 minutes into the film (the little girl being slammed around in her own bed by an unseen force... speaking in a foreign voice: "Keep away! The sow is mine!!")

And how about 1978's horror classic Halloween. With the exception of the opening murder of Judith Myers, nothing "horrific" really happens in that film until about an hour and four minutes in, when Michael Myers strangles Annie in her car then slashes her throat. I'm referring to the 104 minute version of the film (which has additional footage added to it).

I dare say these two incredibly well-made horror films would receive a similar reaction to (the backlash against) Paranormal Activity if released today.

Paranormal Activity is a film that takes its time to establish a lot of key important information that serves as the BASIS for the subtle (and not so subtle) scares that come later (Re: The fact that Katie has been pursued by this demon since she was a little girl, the fact that her family home was destroyed by fire when she was 13. The visit by the psychic who clues her (and her boyfriend Micah) in on the specifics of how hauntings perpetuate are are made worse by negative emotions, or by the invitations implied by the use of an ouija board etc.)

One either has the attention span for this expository information, or one does NOT have it.

The bottom line is this film is much more effective if one is patient and has an ample attention span... "ample" when compared to today's shrinking attention spans.

[durgos]

One of my best friends & I went & saw it last week...we see horror movies all the time...we both agree that this was one of the scariest in a long time...

[samurainoir]

Does a great job of creating a certain mood and suggestion of infectious terror in the couple.

Ultimately though, I was much more entertained by the cheesy eighties Tawny Katean film Witchboard (of which the similarities are startling, demon/ghosts aside).

[samurainoir]

Paranormal Activity is a film that takes its time to establish a lot of key important information that serves as the BASIS for the subtle (and not so subtle) scares that come later (Re: The fact that Katie has been pursued by this demon since she was a little girl, the fact that her family home was destroyed by fire when she was 13. The visit by the psychic who clues her (and her boyfriend Micah) in on the specifics of how hauntings perpetuate are are made worse by negative emotions, or by the invitations implied by the use of an ouija board etc.)

One either has the attention span for this expository information, or one does NOT have it.

My feeling is, because we were spoon fed all this information as expository dialogue, it felt kind of lazy and telegraphed things to the audience a bit too much. I didn't find it subtle at all. It might have been scarier if it was more of an unknown quantity.

"It's not a Ghost, it's a Demon!".

"Here's what Demons are according to this book I'm reading."

"Don't use a Ouiji Board!"

"Look footprints!"

"What! How could this photograph have gotten here when it should have burned along with the rest of my stuff when I was 13?"

"Look at this woman's experience on the internet that is exactly like yours... it much have jumped to you after the exorcism."


It's that voyeuristic surveillance camera aesthetic that makes this so creepy in an intimate kind of way, but remember that this has practically become a cottage industry in so many low budget Asian Horror films in the past decade from stuff like the original shot-on-video Ju-On, and so many of them have done it better with better payoffs and way less exposition than was necessary to give the audience the creepies.

[draconianguard]

That's not fair. As a 42 year old former film major and horror fan I have seen a LOT of horror films... American and foreign. So my favorable opinion of this film does not exist with an ignorance of really good classic horror films to fall back on.

Horror means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. This was a different, much more subtle approach to horror that did NOT rely on blood, guts, gore, or CGI FX. It therefore felt much more grounded in reality, and it had a greater ring of truth to it (for those of us with an interest in actual paranormal activity cases).

For today's generation of film-goers, with their limited attention spans, they have GREAT DIFFICULTY focusing on a film like this because "nothing scary happens in the first 5 minutes". I've seen the film 3 times now. The amount of chatting, giggling, and texting from the younger viewers during the first half of this movie is mind-boggling to me!

This is the same group that likely does NOT find a film like The Excorsist frightening (and instead considers it amusing) because "nothing scary happens in the first 5 minutes". 12 year old Regan McNeil doesn't begin to show her first signs of demonic possession in that film until about 33 minutes into it (during a routine medical exam to diagnose her "hyper-kinetic behavior"). And the scenes of her more horrific manifestations of demonic possession don't begin until about 53 minutes into the film (the little girl being slammed around in her own bed by an unseen force... speaking in a foreign voice: "Keep away! The sow is mine!!")

And how about 1978's horror classic Halloween. With the exception of the opening murder of Judith Myers, nothing "horrific" really happens in that film until about an hour and four minutes in, when Michael Myers strangles Annie in her car then slashes her throat. I'm referring to the 104 minute version of the film (which has additional footage added to it).

I dare say these two incredibly well-made horror films would receive a similar reaction to (the backlash against) Paranormal Activity if released today.

Paranormal Activity is a film that takes its time to establish a lot of key important information that serves as the BASIS for the subtle (and not so subtle) scares that come later (Re: The fact that Katie has been pursued by this demon since she was a little girl, the fact that her family home was destroyed by fire when she was 13. The visit by the psychic who clues her (and her boyfriend Micah) in on the specifics of how hauntings perpetuate are are made worse by negative emotions, or by the invitations implied by the use of an ouija board etc.)

One either has the attention span for this expository information, or one does NOT have it.

The bottom line is this film is much more effective if one is patient and has an ample attention span... "ample" when compared to today's shrinking attention spans.

Thanks for the rant. I personally know people who aren't huge horror fans that liked this one (mostly young). Instead of being suspenseful, I felt the film dragged. The ending was decent, but not that scary. Even if you liked the film, do you honestly believe it lived up to the hype? Do you really think it was one of the scariest films ever made? If this had no promotion and someone saw this on the SyFy Channel, it wouldn't get as much praise. Comparing this to The The Exorcist (one of my favorite films) is like comparing manure to ice cream. Halloween? This hack director is no John Carpenter. I'm not sure if I would be considered today's generation of movie fans (I'm 35). I'm glad you liked it.I on the other hand felt ripped off.