Paranormal Activity

You have heard the buzz, seen the commercials and probably had a friend or two check it out at one of those midnight shows, but is it too late to be scared by Paranormal Activity?

Katie Featherstone stars as Katie - a college student living in San Diego with her boyfriend, Micah (Micah Sloat, and, by the way, since he pronounces his name like "Meeka", doesn't that level of pretention deserve to be haunted?). Since she was a young girl, Katie has been troubled by various hauntings and more, which has her worried when she and Micah start to hear things going bump in the night. To get to the bottom of it all, our hero dude turns into one of the Ghost Hunters and starts to put cameras and recorders all over the house to capture evidence (Yes, we get to see the evidence! But, I don't think it was reviewed by Tango and Steve).

Is something trying to get their attention?

Is it a ghost, or worse?

Paranormal Activity is a scary movie, but I fear the impact is lessened for those of us in the second wave of viewers. How could it ever live up to the hype?

I can imagine being one of the first to see the movie in some out of the way Cineplex and being scared out of my mind because I didn't expect any of this. Writer/director Oren Peli does a fantastic job setting up the premise, shooting the film as if we are watching Micah's home video footage and escalating the chills and action in every scene.

It's the best horror movie I have seen in many years because Peli (who will get about a bazillion dollars for his next couple of movies after everyone deems him to be the next M. Night Shyamalan) thinks it all through, builds the tension and gives the audience a unique viewpoint, instead of throwing fake blood at the camera and showing us hacked up bodies (between Uwe Boll, Rob Zombie and whoever is directing the latest Saw movie, I think we have had enough of that for a lifetime).

Most of the best scenes are portrayals of Micah's video footage, shot within the bedroom and pointed at the bed and the open bedroom door (get ready for 10,000 parodies and copycats). Peli is daring the audience to look for activity beyond the door frame, catch a shadow moving across the floor, or watch something get tossed across the room to wake up the couple. It's brilliant.

However, because we have heard so much about Paranormal Activity, I fear our defenses are up. You can tell when you are about to get a scary moment, you notice Featherstone is not the greatest actress on the planet, and you can start to predict the ending. Yet, I think you will still have fun, especially while watching part of it with your hands over your eyes.

Paranormal Activity is rated R for language.