Paranormal Activity

Paranormal Activity is sort of like "The Blair Witch Project" in a bedroom.  It's another found-footage-improvised-acting film, this time about a young couple (Micah and Katie) who compile a video diary to document the night-time activites of a spirit that has been attached to Katie since childhood.

It's been getting a lot of word-of-mouth hype.  "Terrifying" said The Express.  "The Scariest Film Since The Exorcist" said The Guardian.  "I Sh*t In Me Pants" said The Incontinent.   I regarded this as a bit of a challenge so turned the lights off and settled down to watch it with Figgy the cat who has a weight problem and so HEFTED himself up to sit next to me where he licked his poo parts.  Nice.

Speaking of poo parts, the film suffers from exactly the same flaws as Blair Witch.  Amongst these are irritating lead characters and painfully awful improvised dialogue.  

Micah is particularly bash-worthy.  He spends most of the film doing the opposite of what any sensible person would do and Katie just sort of whinily whines about it but at no point hits him with a stick.  After being told a) not to try to contact the spirit and b) not to anger it Micah alternates between shouting at the spirit to show itself and trying to speak to it via a ouija board.  

As you might imagine, this does not help and soon the visitations escalate in ferocity with doors slamming and bite marks appearing out of nowhere.

And this is where the film starts to exhibit the same strengths as Blair Witch.  There is just something unavoidably spooky about watching quiet footage of people sleeping, and knowing something bad is about to happen.  So about halfway through, I started to get unnerved.  And then comes the ending which made me jump out of my seat and hide behind a cushion ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

So I would recommend this for those of you who fancy a sleepless night or two.  I actually slept like a baby after seeing it, until something unnaturally large with glowing eyes LEAPT at me and CLAWED up my side of the bed.

Bloody Figgy.  I'm sure he did it on purpose.  7/10