Review
Under the immense pressure of progress, Paranormal Activity illustrates the minimalism so crucial to the genre as a whole. It breaks free of the grotesque highlighting that core truth that, in fact, less is always more. Like The Blair Witch before it, it elicits the creativeness of the viewer and forces you to try to disseminate what is actually happening. It’s naturalistic in the best way, and while it is not the scariest movie on the list, it very well could be the most efficient.
🐘🐘🐘
I was in college when Paranormal Activity was released. It had been some years at this point since I had last seen The Blair Witch Project, and I guess the effectiveness of that marketing campaign either did not resonate with me going into the viewing, or I had forgotten completely. I was prepared to see the film, and I, like my viewing companions, thought it was real.
In 2009, at least in North Carolina, Call of Duty was huge, and so was navigating very questionable websites on the internet. It was late one night when I was strategically using my studying time to investigate the new map just released on Call of Duty when a friend of mine found this website. It mentioned that “paranormal” footage found by the San Diego police had been released by the families of the victim, bought by Paramount, and was now set to be released in certain cities only if enough people “demand(ed) it”. I thought that was odd.
That should have been my first sign, but my absolute first sign that this was all a ploy should have been the announcement that the film was coming to a little beach town in North Carolina called Shallotte. That’s where I and about 1,500 people lived. After tickets were acquired (you had to actually go to the theater and buy them early), the online rumor mill started churning.
Katie, one of two main characters in the film, had recently been seen in a neighboring town. The families didn’t actually release the footage and were now suing Paramount. Steven Spielberg got a screening at his home and became mysteriously locked in his bathroom. They were everywhere, and while I doubt seriously Paramount had anything to do with these rumors, they were very effective.
Under the belief that what I was watching was, in fact, “found footage”, I was terrified. It is a painfully slow burn, but the reward was the last 10 minutes. I still get chills rewatching, which speaks to just how scary the movie can be. It fails only in its comparison to The Blair Witch, which is criminally unfair. The Blair Witch created this game and the rules by which the game is played. They are entirely different movies and should be treated as such. On its own, Paranormal Activity is more than capable of handling the pressure of being both “found footage” and horror.
After we returned to our house following the movie, the keyboards were on fire from the five of us finding any and all information on Katie’s whereabouts. It wasn’t until we stumbled upon an alternate ending that we knew we had been duped (this was early internet, it was easy to be duped. And also the alternate ending was equally, if not more, scary than the one chosen for the movie).
The movie, however, didn’t lose any of its steam. It has always been “the little horror movie that could”, and what would end up costing $11,000 and one week to make would ultimately gross $194,000,000, making it the most profitable film of all time.
It scared college Jay, and it continues to scare adult Jay to this day.
Ranking System
I rank all of my movies out of 5 🐘, because I love movies and I love elephants.
