Paranormal Activity (2007)

Director:

Oren Peli

Writer:

Oren Peli (screenplay)

Release Date:

16 October 2009 (USA)

Genre:

Horror | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

What Happens When You Sleep?

Plot:

After moving into a suburban home, a couple becomes increasingly disturbed by a nightly demonic presence.

Plot Keywords:

House | Night | Demon | Handheld Camera | Torn Photograph

Awards:

2 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Katie Featherston	...	Katie
Micah Sloat	...	Micah
Mark Fredrichs	...	The Psychic
Ashley Palmer	...	Diane
Amber Armstrong	...	Amber
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Randy McDowell	...	Lt. Randy Hudson
Tim Piper	...	Richard

MPAA:

Rated R for language.

Runtime:

86 min | 99 min (extended version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour

Certification:

USA:R (certificate #45634) | Canada:13+ (Québec) | Canada:14A (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Ontario) | UK:15 | Finland:K-15 | Ireland:15A | Australia:M (2009) | Singapore:NC-16 | Hong Kong:IIB | New Zealand:M | Norway:15 | Sweden:15 | Germany:16 | Netherlands:16 | Philippines:PG-13 (MTRCB) | Portugal:M/12 | Brazil:14

Filming Locations:

San Diego, California, USA

Company:

Blumhouse Productions

Trivia:

Oren Peli intended to make the film for around $10,000 dollars but the final budget ended up being between $11,000 and $15,000 dollars.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Katie is speaking Spanish and tries to say "I want to be a teacher" she says "Yo quiero estar una maestra", which is wrong. She should have said "Quiero ser una maestra". It seems that Micah didn't know how to speak Spanish neither because he tells her that she did well. What's strange is how she became a "graduate student".

Quotes:

Micah: What if we just get this Ouija board and we find out what it wants and then we give it what it wants? Then it's gone.
The Psychic: Because what it probably wants is Katie.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Angela and Friends: (#1.14)" (2009)

Complete Garbage

I have never in my life hated a movie or a video game or anything so badly that I gave it a ZERO out of 10. Paranormal Activity changed that. (Well okay, technically I gave it a 1, but in my mind, I just gave it a zero because there is nothing good about this movie.) The movie was absolutely terrible. I was bored out of my mind for the entire movie. Half the scenes in the movie were the two main characters (a couple) bickering (and no one pays for a horror movie to see people bicker--unless they die as a result of or shortly after they bicker). The other half of the scenes (the ones that were supposed to be scary) was just sitting around for a few minutes waiting for something to happen. And then something incredibly lame (on the order of furniture moving by itself) would happen. I actually found myself checking my watch every few minutes to see how much longer I'd have to suffer through this. (30 minutes into the movie, I considered walking out of the movie as a result of the excruciating boredom, but I decided against it since I was here with friends and they needed to give me a ride home.) The "scary" scenes themselves were pretty underwhelming. Aside from the fact that they were so few and so short and so lame, they were completely predictable, completely cliché. Every "scary" thing that happened I could see coming from a mile away, and my reaction was more of "seriously, that's the best they could come up with?" rather than one of fear. The sole exception, the one time when something happened that I didn't expect, it actually amused me to the point that I burst out in laughter. Only the most sheltered of people would find this stuff scary. Either that or people who come in with the mindset of wanting or expecting to be scared. But someone in that mindset could also be scared by your friendly neighbor saying "hi".

The movie has been described to me by multiple sources as "weird sounds in the middle of the night". Yeah, I hear weird sounds at night every frickin' night, and I'm still not scared. Maybe if a monster jumped out and dragged me out of my bed, then I'd be scared. But I'd be scared of getting dragged out of my bed by a monster with or without this movie.

Maybe all of this garbage would have been worth it if there was a nice payoff at the end. But no, the payoff was literally in the last few seconds of the movie. And to top it off, that payoff was something I'd already predicted as soon as the movie began.

Now don't misunderstand me. I love horror movies. I even enjoy the really really bad ones. But even I hated Paranormal Activity. It was painfully boring, predictable to the point of cliché, and simply not scary at all. I'll even take a page from the book of Comic Book Guy and call it the Worst Movie Ever.

I don't regret it, though. I actually love writing reviews about grossly overrated pieces of entertainment where I just completely trash them. And Paranormal Activity gave me that opportunity.