Night fright

Paranormal Activity brings the
scares on a low budget

LO-FI FREAKINESS: Paranormal Activity

by MARK SLUTSKY

Digital special effects have seen a spectacular increase in sophistication since James Cameron unleashed “morphing” on the world in 1991’s Terminator 2. With spurring from him and George Lucas, computer technology has completely transformed the way Hollywood creates images for the screen, and Cameron’s 3D, hugely computer-generated Avatar, due out later this year, should take it to a new level.

And yet, I’m not surprised that last weekend’s top-grossing movie was Paranormal Activity, a horror film made for something like $15,000 and featuring the most minimal of special effects. Much like The Blair Witch Project, it’s a movie that offers scares through suggestiveness, not elaborate visuals. And more to the point, it’s visually the opposite of a shiny Hollywood, mostly-computer-rendered production, using the aesthetic of home video to provide a sense of realism that heightens the scares when the supernatural creeps through to the banal and everyday.

Directed by first-timer Oren Peli, Paranormal Activity stars Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat as “Katie” and “Micah,” a San Diego couple besieged by a mysterious haunting. Or, at least, Katie is, having been stalked by a supernatural presence since her childhood. As the film begins, Micah has just bought a video camera to record the goings-on in their bedroom at night (no, not those goings-on) in order to get to the bottom of the mystery. The film is entirely made up of footage ostensibly filmed by the characters, with a good deal of the most scary stuff taking place at night, as they sleep, overseen by the camera.

It’s a slow burn, but as Micah starts provoking the unseen presence, things get weirder and scarier—though always limited by the dark, low-quality video, which makes for an interesting tension. At some point, though, the scares start to get repetitive and plateau, and the ending is a bit of a fizzle. Still, Paranormal Activity does a pretty good job of holding your attention, and while reports of people freaking out and running out of the theater may be exaggerated (or just cases of small-scale mass hysteria), it’s far more effective than many genre flicks with literally a hundred times its budget.

PARANORMAL ACTIVIT
IS NOW IN THEATRES