Review: 'Paranormal Activity' isn’t the scariest ever, but scary it is

Paranormal Activity
Director: Oren Peli
Writer: Oren Peli
Cast: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
***1/2

Considered the most profitable film ever made (it has reportedly earned over $100 million in the US, on a budget of $15,000), and strangely also the scariest Hollywood movie ever (The Guardian even compared it to Stanley Kubrick’s cult The Shining) Paranormal Activity releases in Indian theatres this Friday.

As might be common knowledge by now, the film is shown as amateur video footages put together to tell the tale of Katie (Katie Featherston) and her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat), and how they are terrorized by supernatural occurrences.

To put it bluntly, the film is not all that great or scary that it is made out to be. It is one of those pop-culture sensations that continue to do well simply because of word-of-mouth references. It is for starters crudely made, the acting just about OK, and this whole idea of real life footage is not necessarily original. (Think Blair Witch Project).

But there are plenty of things that work right. Oren Peli executes the idea of footages to tell the story quite exceptionally, enough to make you jump and shriek. There is no lingering dread, no monsters, no blood and gore, but simple effects like footprints, slamming doors to give you quite a scare. Perhaps one of the most noteworthy tricks employed by Peli is the usage of the timer at the bottom right of the screen: when it moves quickly (like as though in fast-forward) and it suddenly settles down normally, you know that something scary is about to happen. And then it does.

Katie and Micah live in a large two-storied San Diego house, where the couple deals with unusual occurrences. A supernatural presence has returned to haunt Katie, and Micah tries to capture this on video using his camera. Katie is afraid and does not want Micah to tape what is happening, especially when they are warned by a psychic that this is further welcoming the supernatural presence. But Micah remains adamant and the haunting escalates. To describe any further what happens would be giving away the ending. But Peli’s work is convincing enough to make viewers believe that the movie is a record of an adamant boyfriend’s taping of the haunting his girlfriend is being subjected to.

The film is scary, though not as scary as maybe it is made out to be. But if one is in the mood for some shrieks and thrills and not of the variety offered by the blood and gore franchises like Hostel and Saw, then this is the movie to catch this season.