PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
RYAN: We’ve finally seen the greatly hyped “Paranormal Activity.” It only took us a month.
CAROLINE: I was trying to avoid it since I really don’t enjoy horror movies, but we just couldn’t ignore this one. Maybe it’s just because we’ve heard over and over how scary it is, but… it wasn’t that scary.
RYAN: Thankfully, I suppose. We don’t want nightmares. But remember those commercials where they showed footage of audiences watching the movie and they were all screaming? I don’t really get it; we didn’t scream once.
CAROLINE: True, but I definitely got nervous and grabbed your arm a few times. There are some genuinely freaky moments, but they are few and far between. The whole movie is a slow burn. It didn’t get remotely scary till about an hour in. But I think a lot of that is because we were expecting to be super terrified.
RYAN: I just kept hoping to see something more happen. The anticipation is exciting, but things just didn’t happen quickly enough. And when it gets scary, it’s very fast. I’d say there were about two truly freaky moments.
CAROLINE: And they were freaky. But I found the ending a little unsatisfying. Like you, I wanted something more; a twist or a big reveal. More understanding of why this was happening to them, or what the cause of it was. It’s clear early on in the movie that this girl is being haunted, but it doesn’t go much further than that.
RYAN: I wanted to see something more physical. But the actors are all pretty good. You can tell there was no script and that they were improvising off an outline. At one point I thought I could see the girl almost laughing inappropriately, but mostly they were all very natural. And the lead guy is cute.
CAROLINE: No one in it is famous, but they were all believable. This movie was shot three years ago and after making a splash on the festival circuit, Paramount bought it and was going to remake it with big stars. But they didn’t, which is really cool for the actors and the director. Steven Spielberg liked it so much that insisted the movie be released as it was; though he did change the ending.
RYAN: Too bad he couldn’t help out Drew Barrymore’s train wreck of a movie, “Whip It.”
CAROLINE: Ouch. Seriously. I wouldn’t say I didn’t like “Paranormal Activity,” but I was definitely expecting more. That’s part of the problem with seeing a movie after it’s been hyped for so long. I was expecting to be truly scared, and I wasn’t.
RYAN: I love that it didn’t rely on horror clichés though – there’s no editing or music that’s there just to make you jump.
CAROLINE: There’s very little music in the movie at all. It’s shot in a verité style, and is presented as real footage that the police found, even though we all know that’s not true. But kudos to writer/director Oren Peli who came up with the concept and shot the movie in his own house for only $11,000. It’s grossed more than $80 million!
RYAN: Some of the special effects were pretty good too, and as we watched it we were like, “How did they do that with no money?” I’m impressed.
CAROLINE: Yeah, the last few minutes were pretty cool, especially what happens on the second to last night. It’s something you’d expect from a high-budget studio horror movie. But I didn’t love the ending. I think it’s better than the original ending, which I saw on YouTube, but there’s an alternate ending I read about that would have been even better.
— BOTTOM LINE —
RYAN: I’m a little disappointed by this movie even though I know it’s mostly because of all the hype… though I still don’t think I would have screamed out loud like the audience members do in the ads. We’ve definitely seen scarier movies in the last couple of years, like “The Strangers.” This movie more just makes you anxious. I liked it, but I didn’t love the ending.
CAROLINE: I really don’t enjoy horror movies, but it was fun to see this one because it’s the Little Movie That Could for 2009. I was impressed by the acting; it felt very real. I’m glad we saw it, but I was expecting to be more scared. Maybe we needed to be surrounded by terrified fans in the audience to really feel the fear.
RYAN: Yeah, we only had a few people in our audience. But it’s worth seeing in the theater for the surround sound and the communal experience.
— RATING —
