 Tagline:
What happens when you sleep?
"As
art imitates real life fears in Paranormal Activity; we spend the
first ten minutes of the film being bored to tears by a home video
of Katie (Katie Featherson,) filmed by her boyfriend Micah (Micah
Sloat,) just as we would be, should actual friends force us to watch
home videos. Luckily for anyone totally intrigued by the low-budget,
high-grossing, drive-viewers-out-of-the-theatre scary film; it is
not all footage of domestic bliss. Unless you count a demonic presence
in your house as invigorating for your relationship.
Katie and Micah are a normal couple: he is a day-trader, while she
is a college student. But there is more to Katie than meets the
eye, as we learn in her meeting with a psychic (Mark Fredrichs).
Since she was eight years old, Katie tells the psychic, she has
been haunted by a 'presence' of sorts. When the psychic visits their
home early on in the film, Katie tells him that since her childhood,
she often saw a grey form of sorts standing by the foot of her bed
every night. Her younger sister would see the form too, but it was
only ever by Katie's bed. Occasionally, Katie tells the psychic,
she would hear something calling her name out. This entire exchange
is of course being filmed by Micah, who plans on setting up the
camera in their room in hopes of catching any paranormal activity
that goes down during the course of the night. Katie recalls her
childhood home catching on fire, for reasons that could never be
discovered. The psychic tells Katie that there seems to be a demonic
presence around her, which is not happy about the fact that she
is seeking help to understand or get rid of it. He recommends the
couple to get in touch with Dr Abrams, a demonologist. His parting
advice to the haunted duo is to never mess with Ouija boards, as
this will just lead to the demon thinking they want to make contact.
As the nights wear on, we witness some things that may or may not
be paranormal in nature through Micah's camera. While all of this
freaks her out enough to want to call Dr Abrams ASAP, Micah wants
to fix this domestic problem himself. He brings in an Ouija board
and asks Katie to help him contact the demon. She flies into a rage
as this was the one thing the psychic told them never to do. The
couple leaves the house to cool off, and we see the planchette on
the Ouija board move by itself. The board springs a small fire which
extinguishes on its own. Later, Micah finds the board with markings
on it and guesses a few possible answers the demon might have left;
the name Dina or other variations of it. This does turn out to be
a warning of sorts, as Micah discovers the exorcism of a woman named
Diana on the Internet, with circumstances strikingly similar to
Katie's. Diana died as a result of the exorcism, and Micah feels
the demon is warning him and Katie off from contacting anyone to
help them out.
Ever the man of the house, Micah lines the hallway outside their
bedroom with talcum powder in hopes of recording footprints on it.
They do find footprints, and get led to the attic where they discover
a burnt picture of a very young Katie. Soon the demon ups the harassment
factor by creeping into bed with the unhappy couple, dragging Katie
out of bed and slamming doors shut and banging on them. Katie and
Micah finally try getting in touch with Dr Abrams but he is now
out of town. So they try the next best thing: moving out of their
house for a while. When it is time to leave though, Katie complacently
tucks herself into bed and refuses to leave. Could this be the beginning
of the end?
Paranormal Activity is not over the top scary. However, one never
found The Blair Witch Project particularly terrifying either and
that is the film Paranormal Activity is compared to. It does have
its moments though. Perhaps it's the documentary-style approach
to the shooting of the film which make it strike a chord. After
all, how many of us can deny having heard mysterious footsteps and
sounds in those grey moments right before sleep? It won't exactly
be a loss to miss out on this one but everyone and the ghoul in
their attic is watching Paranormal Activity. Why not just give in
to peer pressure and watch it anyway? Even if it doesn't scare you,
it might come in handy as a good conversation starter.
- Amina
Baig
*YUCK
**WHATEVER
***GOOD
****SUPER
*****AWESOME
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