Paranormal Activity - Film Review

Ever since The Blair Witch Project (1999) was released, and subsequently paved the way for the shaky-cam, “first person” way of filmmaking, horror film buffs have been divided and unsettled. Amongst the ever-growing catalogue of these frightening found-footage films—most of which have been influenced by the cinéma véritéstyle— Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity (2007) is the scariest so far. However, after Blair Witch, there remains a trick when it comes to displaying the horror in this low-budget kind of way. There are only two ways in which you could approach this kind of horror movies. You might say, ”Great, I will definitely go watch that,” or you may think, ”No way, I will not be tricked again”. As a horror fan(atic), I went and I watched it again (because the first time around I was under the very heavy influence of sir Alcohol and even hallucinated two different endings). Now I can say with a clear conscience that I would rather spend a night in Freddy Krueger’s house (A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), playing video games with Jason (from the (in)famous Friday the 13th (1980)), than stay for even a minute in Paranormal protagonists Katie and Micah’s haunted house. Or maybe I’m just growing old and more easily scared.