Paranormal Activity (2007)

Directed by: Oren Peli | 86 minutes | horror | Actors: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs, Amber Armstrong, Randy McDowell, Ashley Palmer, Tim Piper, Crystal Cartwright

What can you really scare movie viewers these days? The rise of technological gadgets such as the mobile phone, the handheld camera and the laptop make it increasingly difficult for horror makers to create a believable, everyday setting that has a frightening effect. After all, direct contact with the outside world is always within reach. Of course you can choose a secluded place without cell towers or electricity, but the viewer does not feel threatened quickly. A matter of staying at home: away danger! But if that safe house is the setting for creepy oddities, where else can you go? In ‘Paranormal Activity’, the scene of the disaster is an ordinary bedroom in the house where twenty-somethings Micah and Katie have recently moved in together. Katie has recently stated that she suffers from night terrors every few years and wants to get rid of them with the help of a demonologist. But Micah prefers to capture the idiosyncrasies on film, in order to perhaps have a nice pocket money left over.

The film does not open with the Paramount logo, but with a word of thanks to the families of Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat for providing the footage. A lame trick that is also used in films like ‘The Blair Witch Project’ (1999) and ‘Cloverfield’ (2008) to make the viewer believe that this is authentic material. Admittedly, the film was made in 2006 and it took three years to get a large-scale release, but even then the novelty wore off anyway. The only positive thing about such a message is that it warns the viewer about the image quality of the film (‘Watch out, shakycam!’), so that people who can’t stand it can quickly leave the room. (By the way, the camera shake is not that bad in this film, because the video is on a tripod a lot of the time.)

Apart from this miss, the film starts very strong. A few literal house, garden, and kitchen shots explain the background of Micah and Katie believably, while Katie comments on the new camera her boyfriend shoves in her face. It soon becomes clear that the sensationalist Micah is quite obsessive and has little regard for Katie’s personal experience. What is especially striking here is the strong natural playing of newcomer Katie Featherston, who is completely believable as the English student who lets Micah go his own way for a long time against her better judgement. Every night when the couple goes to bed, the camera is placed on a tripod and the text appears on the screen as to which night it is, including a clock that shows the time.

In this way we follow the couple for about three weeks, during which remarkable phenomena indeed occur, which are all neatly captured on screen. A door that suddenly half-closes and then opens again, strange noises in the hallway, lights that go on and off, a moving shadow… The events themselves aren’t even particularly frightening, but the tension is in the fact that almost everything happens while Micah and Katie are sleeping. The great strength of this film is the nagging fear it creates for everything that happens around you during sleep. Unfortunately, the way this is presented is also a major weakness. The nights are shown in their entirety, with an image that is fast-forwarded. Because the image returns to normal speed at the important moments, it is exactly clear every time when something ‘scary’ is about to happen. The only tension is still in the question of what exactly awaits the couple.

The title ‘scariest movie of all-time’ is therefore rather exaggerated. The film is rather disturbing. Not only because of the fate of the pair, but also because of Micah’s attitude throughout the film. His reckless attitude to provoke the demon that attacks his girlfriend in spite of the imminent danger, so that he has valuable film material in his hands, is a model for our new information culture, in which everyone can supposedly become famous on YouTube and then make a lot of money by all kinds of talk shows. This makes ‘Paranormal Activity’ very much a film of our time and in that respect it is (perhaps unintentionally) very successful. It’s not the demon that’s scary, it’s the behavior of the characters!