PARANORMAL ACTIVITY review: things go bump in the night for 90 minutes, nobody cares

Religion, astrology, UFOs, Nessie, homeopathy, supernatural events, paranormal activity, and something about black cats–these are things I like to pile into a single category called ‘bullshit’. They’ve been more generously described by various people as mythology, pseudoscience, actual science (ha!), and unequivocal truth (oh dear), but as far as I’m concerned, they’re all extremely-but-unfortunately convincing by-products of software in our brains designed to build patterns connecting events to simplify our perception of reality, even if we’re ascribing cosmic significance to totally random coincidences: our brains have to square reality away with what we’ve been told by our elders, so our brains will happily fudge facts in order to satisfy themselves. It takes only a mild but disciplined force of will to counteract your auto-bullshit software–remind yourself that there isn’t a single shred of evidence for the existence of Bigfoot, UFOs, the god of thunder, or some Jewish conspiracy behind 9/11, and you can consciously force your subconscious into behaving itself (the cheeky bastard).

So when, partway through Paranormal Activity, we’re introduced to a “Demonologist,” my immersion in the film was smashed screaming out of a tenth-story window to plummet to a bloody death on the sidewalk below. Ambulances were called, CPR was administered, but that poor innocent immersion was never coming back. The man has a PhD in Demonology. From where, the university of advanced bullshit? How can people spend the better part of a decade studying something that doesn’t exist, to be proclaimed experts in said things that obviously don’t, never have, and never will exist? And why does nobody ask, calmly and politely, “a professor in what? I thought professors only studied real things. Humph, silly me!”

Sadly enough my immersion had already taken a wicked beating, the kind only endorsed by Al-Qaeda and the CIA (look up water-boarding, weep for civilisation), even before being introduced to the academic equivalent of a deluded child encouraged by their stupid but loving parents into following their bullshit dream of studying bullshit and scamming people out of thousands of real dollars in the name of real bullshit. The shooting style is deliberately jarring. Deliberately. Like, the director asked the actors to please shake the camera some more, or the audience won’t understand it’s supposed to be self-shot found-footage, you idiot. I felt nausea creeping in a mere ten minutes into the film, and I sat through all of Cloverfield (a veritable masterpiece by comparison) without feeling queasy once. Okay, maybe once or twice, but still …

Yet the first warnings of the breaking of immersion, like thumb-tacs applied gently but firmly to the soles of immersion’s feet, were the characters themselves. They were ostensibly manufactured to accurately represent as much of the American population as possible. Therefore, he’s a smug and arrogant prat, he treats his girlfriend like shit, works as something called a ‘day trader’ (I’ll take your Monday for my Thursday, how’s that? Never quite got the hang of Thursdays), at first is in denial of the godawful situation he finds himself in, then proceeds to make it even worse for everyone, and then obstinately refuses to compromise or apologise for the shitstorm he’s caused. And so it follows that she is shrill, whiny, repeats herself often, drives a sports car–to university, ha–and is somewhat chubby. These hideous, monstrous, upper-middle class white American dipshits are our companions for the next 86 minutes. The nausea doubles.

The only shining light at the end of the tunnel confronting the dear departed immersion are the steady, tripod-shot, aiming-for-terrifying-but-settling-for-creepy nighttime scenes. A few of these scenes, shamefully buried ass-deep into the film (like, 60 – 80 minutes in), are genuinely creepy, and if I wasn’t so nauseous and angry at this stupid, stupid woman and her annoying, juvenile boyfriend I would probably have actually been genuinely scared. It’s one thing to understand that bumps in the night are totally explicable and non-threatening occurrences, but to actually see fabricated-for-your-terror things going bump in the night is in its own way perversely, manipulatively entertaining.

But then we cut back to another elongated, ‘naturalistic’ day-time scene in which fuck-all happens, killing any momentum and suspense the film can muster, and taking a long, acidic piss over the corpse of my good, dear, sadly dead friend immersion. So how do you fix this monstrosity, you ask, with that you’re-just-bitter-because-you-have-no-toleration-of-bullshit look in your eye (also adopted by tweens when claiming that Twilight is good, and incidentally also adopted by Michael Bay acolytes, oh, and religious apologetics)? Cut every single scene that does not take place between midnight and five a.m. in the bedroom. Congratulations, your film is now 10 minutes long, and scary as hell. Show everyone your short horror film, impress Steven Spielberg, get a sweet deal on remake royalties, and go make a better movie about aliens and UFOs in Area 51, using the same self-shot found-footage technique, and–oh dear.

I’m all for expanding the boundaries of film, smashing the limitations of old techniques and inspiring generations of filmmakers yet to be born. But there are just some rules you don’t mess about with when it comes to film, and the most important of these is this: respect your audience. Treat them like equals, intelligent but willing to co-operate, and you’ll be rewarded with genuine, positive reactions. Treat them like idiots, stringing them along with cheap shock tactics and instilling deep, unsettling nausea into their bellies, and they’ll tell their friends “it was really boring and I felt sick, but I paid fifteen bucks for it, so my guilty subconscious is forcing me to tell you it’s good.”

The main reason I’m smashing the crap out of this soggy turd of a film is because it got a worldwide, theatrical release, and should be judged alongside its peers accordingly. Like I said, trying to be progressive in film is fine; but if you want to buck the trends of using tripods and developing engaging plots and narratives in favour of your-inbred-cousin-filmed-this-while-drunk photography and shallower-than-a-puddle characters and mythology, I’m going to point out the gaping chasm separating your putrid shitstain of an effort and the shining, sleek, gorgeous species of art you share the stage with. If I’d seen this film as part of a short-film festival (in the imaginary edited form I dream of it being in), or even as part a horror film festival, I would’ve been a lot more impressed. Held up against Zombieland or Avatar, where immersion is king, the film that brutally tortures and kills immersion deliberately and for sport is going to get a vengeful bashing from the likes of me.

Toilets are that-a-way. Refunds as well.

12 out of 100

One last item of housekeeping: the film’s budget is reported at around $15,000. The actors were paid $500 apiece for a week’s work (not bad for a low-budget debut feature). The vast majority of the money was spent on renovating the director’s house so it was appropriate for the script–that 50+ inch TV you glimpse for a split second a few minutes into the film probably cost half the budget. He also bought furniture, painted walls and installed a staircase. Oh, and the director was personally paid $300,00 for the rights to distribution and development of sequels. And the film grossed $120 million in the US. So not only is the director filthy stinking rich, but also got a free house renovation out of it. Sweet!