So I am crunched for time this evening between having to review a new documentary movie, spending quality time with the beagle and trying to have some semblance of a social life that I opted to keep this post today short and sweet. This evening, our local Alamo Drafthouse is putting on a little window gallery show of Paranormal Activity. Their open gallery windows on the side of the building will be filled with actors who will be recreating scenes from the Paranormal Activity movies, which I think is just fucking awesome. So why not repost my original blog piece on the first film of the series to mark this event tonight.
I sometimes begrudge the entire found footage genre as being trite and terrible. I can’t stand overt shakiness of movies that try and recreate the feeling of The Blair Witch Project. That movie spawned an entire generation of cheaply produced movies that try and come up with some new angle for having footage that is found by random people and always about a group of kids that I give two shits about in terms of connecting with their characters. I usually root for their demise in the found footage genre.
But Paranormal Activity managed to simplify the approach with a single mounted camera, static in its recording and managed to feel fresh without it being overbearing. It played upon the long, unbroken scenes of long takes that drew out the tension to a point where the covers blowing for no reason seemed scary. It’s a perfect, minimal horror movie that used the medium and ambiance to produce the tension and scares needed to make the movie unsettling. So hopefully this evening, I will get see something cool and unique with the Window Gallery showing of Paranormal Activity.
Below is an excerpt of my original review along with a link to the original article. Enjoy and have a good weekend!
So the premise is simple, with a poltergeist style entity haunting this young couple. Where the movie shines is the tension that it builds throughout the evenings recording. Long scenes of silence and no dialogue where the couple just sleep and we are given this unrestrained view on the proceedings. We hear the ambient noises as it breaks the silence of the night and startles the viewer. It is terribly effective. I don’t get the chills often when watching scary movies, but it’s the eerie setting that makes us think that it could happen to us in our own place. Click here to read more.
