Paranormal Activity

Verdict: Very, very, very, very, very good.

This haunted house flick was all the rage a few months ago. Made by a pair of amateur filmmakers for the unbelievable sum of only $11,000, it sat on the shelves for a year or two unable to generate any studio interest until it came to the attention of Steven Speilberg. It has since made something like a billion percent over and above in profit. And it has done it for one simple reason, a simple reason that continually keeps Hollywood scratching its head and trying every single possible way to circumvent it.

It tells a scary story.

That’s it. It’s a horror film that is legitimately scary. How rare and wonderful, and it deserves all the praise it’s getting. So much crap coming out of Hollywood these past, well, decades, I suppose, just fails to get it. They don’t know how to be genuinely frightening. Paranormal Activity contains no booming, ear-splitting outbursts of soundtrack Telling You To Be Scared. There are no spring-loaded screeching cats. There are no scenes of decapitations, dismemberments, gallons of blood, blah blah boring blah. No character is sadistically tortured. None of any of that. What it does so very effectively is create a palpable tone of creepiness from the first couple of scenes, building relentlessly over the 85 minutes of running time.



A young couple has been experiencing some odd events in their house off and on for a while. Strange noises such as muffled bangs, faint scratching sounds, barely audible whisperings. Sometimes a faucet is running inexplicably. Other times a light will be on in the morning, after everything was shut off the night before. Nuisance things, like keys on the floor in the morning when they were left on the counter the night before.

Brave but dumb boyfriend decides to go on the offensive and purchases a camera and some expensive high-tech recording equipment, initially hoping to get some ghostly footage on film for an easy buck. Very quickly, however, things escalate as the entity makes its presence known more and more, and at the end –

Well, let’s just say you need to see it. Oh – only if you have the constitution for very, very scary flicks. This movie is NOT for the inexperienced.

Now … go out and rent it! Better yet, buy it and watch it every Halloween!