Halloween weekend and what better way to spend it than by watching a horror movie! “Paranormal Activity” was referred by a friend of mine saying that it was really awesome. The press had been pretty generous about the movie too and this week the movie prevented “Saw VI” from getting its traditional No.1 spot. In short, expectations were sky-high when I begin watching it. My expectations had been similar when I was referred by roommate to watch “The Ring” but the results had turned out to be less than flattering!! Did the same happen with this movie? Well, almost!
The movie centers around Katie and Micah (their real name too!) who are a couple living in a haunted house. Not haunted exactly as Katie has been witnessing paranormal activities since she was aged 8 and even before she came to the house. Micah meanwhile wants to document these activities so that he can believe them. So he buys a camera and decides to follow their day to day activity and keeps it turned on during the night so that he can get a visual documentation of Katie’s experiences. What follows is a series of nights through the camera’s vision and what it captures.
I have never been genuinely scared by any horror movie and much of the scare that I have experienced have been incidental due to some sudden noise or nifty camera work. Even with that yardstick, the movie didn’t actually scare me. In fact, the first paranormal activity that you see comes only around 24th minute into the movie and is more comical than actually scary. What worked for me were the two main protagonists. While Micah remains a persistent non-believer and always eager to find out more about these activities, Katie portrays the helpless victim well. They don’t act like silly horror movie characters that are more pain to watch than the ghost or the demons themselves. That brings me to the origin of the paranormal activities- a demon! Unfortunately, save for a brief history we don’t actually get to know him very well so that brings the scare-factor down several notches. And the ending is so expectedly loud, gory and lame that you wish you had skipped it.
All in all, the movie was a notch better than “The Ring” so go ahead if it scared you, but I won’t recommend anyone to watch it otherwise.
RATING: **1/2 (out of 5)
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2 comments:
Me too, I'd always end up laughing rather than scared to some horror movies because of the tacky or cheesy prosthetic make ups that was used.
The only movie that scares me a bit is the "Exorcism of Emily Rose".
No corny make ups. And Just the thought that it was a true story scares me enough.
BTW, when I was younger, I've witnessed an exorcism.
XO
OMG, that's one experience you must have had!! Btw the real world today is much more scarier than the demons and zombie of the movies so it's actually more fun to watch funny horror movies like "Zombieland" than actual horror movies!
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