Review

Micah and Katie are a young couple engaged to be engaged, please excuse me while I vomit, who have cornered their slice of the American dream. All would be well except that they are being disturbed at night by strange sounds and their possessions being moved. Enter a Psychic, Dr Fredrich, who has a sideline in ghost busting. Apparently Micah and Katie don't have to worry about poltergeists or ghosts, which must have come as a relief, as the resident demon has probably frighten them off, I'm guessing that bit of news isn't going to give the couple a warm fuzzy feeling.

The Psychic warns Micah and Katie not to attempt to contact the being causing their problems and to avoid negative energy, as this will likely lead to an increase in activities. Naturally Micah, who is a complete tool, starts trying to contact the demon, brings an Ouija board into the house, and refuses to call in a demonologist that the Psychic recommended. This leads to the couple becoming more argumentative, Katie wants to call in the experts, thus adding the negative energy to the equation. Our resident demon starts going into energizer bunny mode with Micah finally realizing they are dealing with something he has no hope of comprehending or battling. One hell of a fine horror flick ensues.

Paranormal Activity is the latest in a long line of faux-documentary movies that owe their existence to the Italian grand guignol epic Cannibal Holocaust. This style of film making was popularized in North America by the ground breaking The Blair Witch Project, continued in Cloverfield, and even dragged in zombie master Romero with Diary of the Dead. Basically the Audience are asked to suspend belief and believe what they are being shown on screen actually happened. It's the "found footage after the event" style of movie that has two advantages over more traditional approaches; it doesn't cost a lot to make, and it doesn't require a large film crew. To be blunt, I absolutely can't stand found footage movies at the best of times and went into Paranormal Activity believing the movie's reputation was the result of hype and internet hysteria, rather than proficient movie making. So how did the latest "found footage" film fare with yours truly?

Firstly there are a couple of technical problems with the movie that show post production tinkering and serve to detract from Paranormal Activity's atmosphere and tension. When a scary moment is coming, and the thrills and spills are peppered throughout the movie, the sound volume is increased. There's no score going down so you get to hear increased tape hiss as we wait for the next jump moment. I successfully predicted every scare coming up once I noted the problematic use of the sound control knob, which took me about five minutes into the movie. Secondly, and this had my teenage sidekick sniggering, during the night time scenes the film shows a time stamp down the right hand bottom of the screen. We don't get this during daytime screens, and no one seemed interested in explaining why this was so. I found the time thing to be an unnecessary distraction, time lapse and light should be enough to indicate the passage of time.

Having pointed out a couple of issues with the movie, that may not really worry normal cinema patrons, I have to say Paranormal Activity is perhaps the best cinema dark genre movie I have seen thus far in the new millennium. While not going so far as to call it "this generations' The Exorcist", or "the most frightening movie ever made", I still found myself wide eyed and bushy tailed as events unfolded and Director Peli tightened the screws. The final scene in Paranormal Activity is almost unwatchable in terms of tension, you know something is coming but Peli waits a couple of beats to deliver his punch line that knocked me on my arse. Here I'm forgetting the final minute of the movie which is painstaking trite and an unnecessary jump moment. Did she eat the camera or something?

A movie that is prepared to take a risk in the face of the sewage spewing forth from Boredwood this Century

Script wise Paranormal Activity simply screams out to be compared to The Exorcist, I'm going to reference William Friedkin's masterpiece and would like to point out that both movies come from the same pedigree while approaching their subject matter in entirely different ways. Peliâ's movie requires that the Audience listen to the dialogue while The Exorcist, a traditional movie experience, was happy enough to visualize the good stuff. Thus we learn from Micah that there has been scratching sounds that are likened to claws being dragged down a wall, The Exorcist attempts to explain this away as rats in the antic by the way. Katie further explains there have been unexplained noises in the night and objects have been moved in the house sometime during the night. Anyone who has sat through a "possession" movie is no doubt nodding their head at this stage, noting that things are coming to the boil in terms of increasing activity. It's during the second block of the movie that we start to see activity at night, Micah has a camera running during the night, and during the third block it's all loud footsteps, physical attacks, and I would be phoning the Vatican for an Exorcist stat! Once again this all follows a similar path to the descent into hell that The Exorcist presented in its first two acts. Paranormal Activity condenses The Exorcist's final act into approximately five minutes of tension laced insanity that will knock your socks off. Peli scripts his movie well in terms of plot development, but notably there's a lot of improvised dialogue that works to set the movie in the realms of reality, with two perfectly normal people facing an extraordinary situation.

Behind the camera Peli is sublime with the Director showing a real feeling for tension and getting the most out of very limited effects. Its Peli's innate realization that waiting that fraction of a minute before hitting the audience with a scare is the real payoff in terms of making Paranormal Activity work. There's no blood or guts going down here, it's all loud bangs in the night, lights turning themselves on and off, and dark shadows. Peli suggests things, shows very little, and allows the Audience to do a number on themselves as he gradually winds up for the final pitch. Things escalate during the movie and your pulse will be racing when the really good stuff goes down. I was shaken not stirred by this movie, thank you Peli for showing once again what the horror genre is capable of doing in the right hands.

Paranormal Activity is pretty much a "two punch" film with Katie Featherston (Katie) and Micah Sloat (Micah) holding things down for much of the whole running time. Featherston is a fine actor and I was buying into her performance like a wild night up the Cross. I didn't like the Micah character and thought Sloat overplayed it dramatically. Sloat is too intense for the role and comes off as something of a complete prick. Mark Fredrichs (Dr Fredrich) must have been the Producer's Lawyer or something; I wasn't buying his character or his performance.

T&A is a non starter in Paranormal Activity, though guys do get Featherston's cleavage on occasion. I would imagine the demon would have been buck naked, but since you don't get to see it, there's not much to say in that direction.

Paranormal Activity wasn't scored, Peli is relying on ambient noises and sound bites, but it wasn't needed in the wash up.

I got sent a double pass to Paranormal Activity so dived on in during the movie's second weekend. As stated I wasn't expecting much more than a hyped filled vacuum but Peli came at me with both guns blazing and delivered one hell of a tension laced and downright frightening movie. I was loving it and lapped up the film's entire 100 minute running time like tequila off a bar top at closing time. For mine, most frightening movie of the year thus far, with the proviso that I still need to catch up with Lake Mungo.

Paranormal Activity rampaged to a shock $107.4 million result in the North American market, and is starting its run in most major International markets. To date the film has spent two weekends at number one in Australia and is looking very solid. We won't get a comparative result to North America but do have a horror hit on our hands regardless.

You are either going to love Paranormal Activity or hate every moment of the movie's running time. There's no middle ground with this journey into the diabolical. For the first time in an Australian cinema I had people screaming all round me, yes I did check my fly was done up, and had by my count seven or so people walk out as Director Peli slowly built his tension. Katie standing for hours by the bed looking at Micah seemed to be enough for some patrons, go figure. Age ranged from teens, the screaming part of our audience, to a group of older women who were visibly shaking as the lights went up in the theater. Approach this movie at your own risk; I enjoyed it, but many wont. Peli asks us to consider what is going on in our homes while we sleep. It's an ill wind at our place if it's chili night, and that's got to be pretty demonic.