Things That Go Bump in the Night

There’s nothing like a good scary movie to send you looking over your shoulder or double-checking if you’ve said your prayers at night. I’m not really sure why I like scary movies, I mean these films are designed to make you scream, give you nightmares, or doubt if there’s something creepy crawling under your bed. Considering that I can’t stand rollercoasters, horror movies are almost nothing to me. For me, the best scary movies won’t show you the ghouls in all their gory glory or won’t have all the guts and innards on display. The best scary films are the ones that leave stuff to your imagination through the use of sound, very simple special effects, and a great deal of innuendo. Paranormal Activity clearly is one of those great scary movies.

In a house in San Diego, California in 2006, young couple Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston) are apprehensive because of a few strange occurrences. Katie claims that a ghostly entity that has been haunting her since childhood has followed her to this new home. Micah wants to capture evidence of this, so he gets a video camera and sophisticated audio equipment to monitor their bedroom as they sleep. Katie contacts a psychic, Dr. Fredrichs (Mark Fredrichs), who says that they are being tormented by a being feeding off negative energy. He suggests that they get in touch the demonologist Dr. Abrams to better understand what they’re dealing with, but Micah wants to make contact by himself through the use of a Ouija board despite Dr. Fredrichs warning against that.

The audio-video equipment ends up recording strange occurrences over the course of three weeks such as noises in the middle of the night, flickering lights, Katie standing up beside the bed and staring at Micah’s sleeping form for hours, footprints entering their room but none heading out, etc. As the strain of these phenomena only aggravate them more, whatever is causing them seems to be getting stronger and more daring in its exploits.

Shot in the form of a documentary like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity might just be the most original and terrifying horror movie in years. First-time film director Oren Peli uses a very modest budget, with hardly any effects to craft a movie that seems so real, it is terrifying. By using a simple video camera and having just Featherston and Sloat supposedly filming everything, you get the impression that these things actually happened to real people three years ago. The camera is shaky, like it is in normal home movies and the acting seems even more raw as they deal with the unseen yet terrifying entity. Much like Blair Witch did a few years back, it’s tough to determine where fiction ends and reality begins. To me, that is a big part of why Paranormal Activity is such a good film. By suspending disbelief better than the typical horror/slasher flick, this movie does what every film aims to do: make you think what you see on film is 100% real.

I started watching this movie alone in my room at around 1:00am on a Wednesday, but even before the first scene was done, I already turned it off and switched to The Tonight Show instead. Why? Because the documentary style with which it was filmed had me concerned that I was going to be too caught up in the illusion and might be too scared at such a late hour. Instead, I proceeded to watch the film a day later, and I was right. I had chills down my spine at different points of this film and some parts made me jumpy. Whether it was the sound of footsteps in the night, a blanket moving suddenly, or the sight of Katie sleepwalking creepily, the director Peli made me believe that “an entity” truly did haunt this couple. The version that will come out in local cinemas will supposedly have a different ending than this version that I’ve seen, so I am curious enough to watch it again. I dare you to watch Paranormal Activity in a cinema or alone in your house at night. Let’s see just how brave you are.