Oct. 22, 2009

Well, you can’t fault the advertising:

Viewers across the country are supposedly plotzing in fear over Oren Peli’s zero budget, faux found-footage ghost story, “Paranormal Activity,” and, if you just watched that trailer, you might think the same could happen to you. Believe me when I tell you, though, that you’ve now seen the good parts, and getting to the vast majority of them is only marginally more entertaining than watching those three assholes in “The Blair Witch Project” argue over which direction they should walk to escape The Thing They’ll Never See.

Remember those arguments? Probably not, because “Blair Witch”’s final sequence was disturbing enough to send people home thinking they watched an actual movie…including the folks at the major studio who signed up the picture’s directors, only to have them tank because they had never, you know, written a producible screenplay or staged a proper scene. Peli’s narrative is certainly meatier than “Blair Witch,” but that doesn’t make it any less of drag to get through.

Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat star as Katie and Micah, a young San Diego couple who set up a fancy digital camera in the hope of taping the ghost or spirit or demon or whatever it is that’s been stomping around their house in the middle of the night. Katie, you see, used to wake up with specters standing at the foot of her bed when she was a kid, and it would appear that she’s in the process of being re-haunted. Micah, however, is more than a bit of a dick, so he doesn’t take her fears particularly seriously.

When Katie consults a paranormal psychic (Mark Fredrichs, mundane enough to be completely believable), he tells the couple that constantly trying to film the ghost - or, God forbid, attempting to contact it via a Ouija board - will only encourage it to act out and try to reach them. So Micah goes right on filming, and, of course, borrows his friend’s Ouija board. Micah's videotaping sessions, then, have supposedly been released by (here comes some foreshadowing) the police, edited, and released as the “documentary” called “Paranormal Activity.”

It's positively Blair witchy!

The big problem with what I’ll call “homemade horror” movies like this is that the narrative process forces camera-wielding characters to film things that no one in their right mind would ever film, thus completely shattering our suspension of disbelief. And that’s no small thing when you’re dealing with monsters and/or the supernatural.

Both “Blair Witch” and “Cloverfield” suffered terribly from this dilemma. Who, after all, keeps the camera rolling and frantically frames shots while they’re running from something that’s trying to eviscerate them? It takes a while - I’d estimate about 30 minutes in - before such silliness mars “Paranormal Activity,” but when it finally arrives it quickly gets way out of hand.

Why, you have to wonder, would Micha set up the camera to record himself aimlessly noodling on a guitar while Katie does a crossword puzzle? Could it be because she’s about to go in the kitchen and shriek, thus scaring the wits out of the audience? Yep. That’s exactly why he does it. He wouldn’t want to miss that, even though he has no idea it’s about to happen.

It’s a running theme throughout the picture that Katie doesn’t want Micha constantly filming and his persistence plays just fine if he’s shooting her, say, brushing her teeth while he questions her about the visitations. Later on, though, when Katie sleepwalks into the backyard and Micha has to get out of bed and find her in the middle of the night, for all he knows she could be in some sort of trouble. But he keeps on filming as he tramps through the empty house and into the darkness, solely because we as an audience need to see it. This sort of thing happens repeatedly in “Paranormal Activity,” and it goes a long way toward killing what’s supposed to be the unbearable mounting tension.

This isn’t a matter of me nitpicking, either. I wanted to love this thing, and, I have to say, the sound effects are utilized quite brilliantly. But I’ve come to the conclusion that these movies revolve around a digital-media conceit that, until somebody figures out how to properly embed it into a narrative, simply isn’t strong enough to follow through on its promise.

By the time the joint starts jumpin’ for longer than 30 seconds at a stretch in “Paranormal Activity’s” final 15 or so minutes, I was already close to screaming out of frustration. Those minutes are effective enough; they have a bit of a nightmarish tinge to them. But I wouldn’t dare go into details, since they’re the only conceivable reason to sit through the rest of the goddamned movie.

“Paranormal Activity,” which cost a cool $15,000 to make, is already one of the most profitable pictures in motion picture history, and it may well become the most profitable. But I’m telling you, folks, wait for the dvd on this one. You’ll be far more haunted if you shell out 20 bucks (including popcorn and a beverage) to see it in a theater.

”Paranormal Activity” contains bad language, creepy stuff (though I would hardly describe it as creepy stuff galore), and a flash of grotesque blood. I’ve seen message boards online, by the way, where people are saying they thought this footage was real. But I’ve also seen message boards where people buy what Rush Limbaugh is saying. Rated R. 97 minutes, instead of the 15 or 20 minutes the events actually deserve.

Paul Tatara