No one is scared of the dark. They are scared of what the dark hides. They, we, are scared of the unknown—bumps in the night, closed doors and shower curtains, attics—because the worst threat is the one we can’t see coming; the one we can’t stop. The best horror taps into our deepest fears: Rosemary’s Baby and the occult, The Exorcist and demonic possession, The Entity and invasion of our personal space. Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston) fall under the third category. Something is inside their home, and it won’t leave. Micah uses some of his money from day trading to buy a camera and record what happens while they sleep. I think you can figure out the rest. What you probably won’t expect, in this age of topless teens and screaming sorority girls, is to actually care about Micah and Katie. We spend the first half hour just getting to know them and seeing how their marriage works. We know it won’t last, but we wish it could. They seem so happy. They seem like us. And if it can happen to them…
Doors mysteriously open and shut, terrible things take place in time-lapse photography, and baby powder takes on a whole new meaning. You might think this is the demon’s fault, but it’s not. It’s Micah’s, or Asshole With A Camera, as I like to call him. See, Paranormal Activity is as much a film about the dissolution of a marriage as it is about a haunting. The real intruder isn’t a ghost, but the camera that Micah gives an all-access pass to their lives. Katie ducks and screams at the lens as much as she screams at her tormentor. She begs Micah to stop, but he doesn’t, no matter how upset she becomes. A real person would have compassion in this case. A real person Micah is not.
Some are calling this Blair Witch for a new generation, with its found footage, growing urban legend, and viral marketing. But tweets and Google and message boards have made another Blair Witch impossible. That movie was so scary because we truly thought it was real, and couldn’t find any proof otherwise, at least for the first few weeks of release. Now, we’re tech-savvy enough to know the truth. Even if we weren’t, by the time Micah brings out the Ouija board or insists on investigating noises in the dark, we would realize we’re watching a movie. If the first half of Paranormal Activity is an improvisational exercise in horror, the second is an exercise in Horror Writing 101.
Any good will Peli created for his characters quickly disappears when Micah inexplicably antagonizes the demon for no other reason than to raise the stakes, as we screenwriters are taught to do. We’re also taught to make our characters likeable, and that’s another thing Micah is not. At times, he feels like the character that didn’t make it into Scream – the guy who’s seen enough scary movies to know what’s supposed to happen and acts accordingly. There is a sense throughout that he really enjoys this as some welcome diversion from the doldrums of staring at stock tickers on dual monitors daily. Be careful what you wish for, as they say. And I couldn’t be anything but happy for what Micah gets, because he deserved it. He just wouldn’t shut up. This movie has taught me that humans and ghosts hate douche bags equally.
Asshole With A Camera aside, Paranormal Activity is a successful example in how to get huge scares out of a tiny budget. Is it the best horror movie of recent years? No, The Orphanage has that honor. But it is the natural progression of a trend started by Blair Witch, of preying on the one excuse we used to finally go to sleep after watching something scary: “It’s just a movie, it’s just a movie…” Take away that security, and nothing remains but real fear. And this movie does feel real at times. Their house feels like the houses we grew up in, where staircases are all shadow, living rooms look like graveyards, and sliding glass doors feel like windows to hell. The movie works, and will surely bring in much, much more than its $15,000 budget, because it makes us feel like kids again, staring at that closed door, waiting for something to come in and take us away. We turn on the light, but that doesn’t help. It doesn’t help Micah and Katie, either. Darkness is a hiding place, for us and for whatever is watching us. Take the darkness away, and we’re both still there.
Clarence Hammond
© Cinephile Magazine, 2009