Paranormal Activity

A guest review, by Saphin

Saphin's given me permission to put it here and edit it lightly (i want to keep it mostly intact).  Given my lack of activity lately, this should bridge the gap between my last review and my next one (which is coming soon, hopefully).

This movie invoked so much ire in me that it MUST be reviewed PROPERLY somewhere!

A quick synopsis:

A young twenty-something couple, Katie and Micah, have just taken the plunge to move in together and they notice they're being haunted by a ghost demon. Katie is interested in terrified by these paranormal activities which have never happened before been happening since she was 8. The couple hire a paranormal investigator psychic who tells them he can't help them so Micah and Katie Micah decides to take matters into his own hands and get rid of the ghost demon himself.

You'd be amazed how many others reviewers got simple things like the plot summary WRONG.

If you want to watch Paranormal Activity, spare yourself and watch the trailer: you'll save time, money, and still see everything that's worthwhile in this movie. Half the movie i was on the edge of my seat.... because i was waiting to see the cool shit that happened in the trailer.

There's not much to this movie, so there's not much to say about it - the movie is THAT unremarkable! Like all Hollywood horror movies, it overuses shock tactics like loud noises and sudden cuts to scare you. The ending felt very unnecessary and there's often a lot of build up to nothing. Also, could they at least TRAIN the actors to use a camera properly? They give them a nice fancy HD Camera so they can shoot the entire movie out of focus and blurry. Is that were their $11,000 budget went? An HD Camera and two no-name actors? They couldn't spare a few extra bucks to teach them how to run a camera properly?

Reviewers are hailing Paranormal Activity as "the scariest movie of the year" and it deserves that title. It IS scary that someone thought investing $11,000 and 7 days on this crap would be a good idea.

This movie embodies everything that's WRONG with the industry these days: unoriginal concept, cheap to produce, and absolutely abysmal writing (if any). No need to pay a camera man, let the actors hold the camera! No need for lots of actors, 3 people is enough!  Audio? Who cares if its whack! its supposed to be psudo-documentary! Writers? who needs 'em!

Its a clever idea every once in a while, so I'm happy that the market isn't saturated with movies like this (after all, how many Blair Witch Projects do we need?[Editor: i'd say one is too many]) but it just smacks of "bottom line budget" film making. I guarantee this will kill the industry. But then again, people seem to LIKE the bottom of the barrel crap Hollywood is churning out these days, so who knows.

Unfortunately i can't say it was a total waste. I am aware that I'm overly offended by this tripe but I'm more upset that I bought into all the hype. It's not a bad movie, but it's not a great movie either. There were a few moments I found myself expectantly chuckling and fewer moments still where I was startled (mostly thanks to loud noises and my sensitive ears).