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Paranormal Activity

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    Ian Jane
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  • Paranormal Activity

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    Released by: Paramount
    Released on: 12/29/2009
    Director: Oren Peli
    Cast: Katie Featherstone, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs, Amber Armstrong
    Year: 2007
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Movie:

    Written and directed by Oren Peli and made for fifteen grand using his own home as the movie's solitary location, Paranormal Activity has much in common with a previous indy success story, The Blair Witch Project. While it's seemingly okay to bash that film now, it scared the crap out of a lot of people who saw it in theaters and on video, and it too was made by a cast of unknowns for a very small amount of money. But where The Blair Witch Project took us outside and played off of its eerie wooded locations, Peli's film plays out almost entirely indoors in an entirely pedestrian looking suburban home. What makes it interesting is how it takes this traditionally safe environment and relinquishes control of it to an unseen and seemingly unstoppable supernatural force. Think of it as Poltergeist meets The Blair Witch Project and you'll be on the right track, or, depending on how familiar you are with low budget indy films, it's probably appropriate to compare this one to The Collingswood Story.

    The movie follows a young cohabitating couple named Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherstone) who are 'engaged to be engaged' once Katie finishes school. Micah, a fairly arrogant guy, makes a good living as a day trader and has created a pretty comfortable life for the two of them. When the movie begins, he's bought a video camera that he intends to set up in their bedroom in hopes of figuring out just what's been going on in the house at night for the last few weeks. Both Micah and Katie have heard strange noises and felt a presence, which Katie says has been a problem for her since the age of eight. Moving hasn't helped things, whatever this spirit or force is has followed her throughout her life and is manifesting once again.

    After consulting with a psychic (Mark Fredrichs) who refers them to an exorcist, Micah rather protectively decides that he'd rather deal with this problem himself and despite promising Katie otherwise, he brings a Ouija Board into the house. The activity in the house intensifies from this point as Micah and Katie try to figure out what, if anything, they can do to stop what they believe to be a demon from haunting Katie.

    Much has been made about the film's ending and yes, it does feel out of place and a bit tacked on but the build up and everything that comes before the finale is really, really well done. This is a film that let's your imagination do much of the work. Rather than bombard you with flashy visuals or effects work the film instead taps into our inherent fear of the dark and superstitious nature. This is a smart film, one that makes the most of its low budget and which sucks you in by building very effective and eerie tension. Made with a cast of unknowns by an unknown, by taking the 'home movie/found footage' approach Peli is able to make his low budget work for him rather than against him. It's easy to accept that it looks and sounds like it does simply because if you or I stuck a camera in our room on a tripod and hit record, it'd probably look very much the same as it does here.

    Believable performances from the two leads, who do a great job of showing the strains that these experiences are putting on their relationship, hold the movie together. The storyline is really very simple, there are no real heavy duty plot twists, though an attempted subplot which appears to want to explain why Katie's being haunted in the first place doesn't really go anywhere when it could have. But then there's that ending, that nasty little minute of the movie where what boarders on greatness runs face first into a wall and knocks itself out. It doesn't ruin the delicious anticipation and sense of dread that builds so perfectly throughout the movie, but it does come close.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Paranormal Activity arrives on Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080p 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. How does it look? About as good as it should when you keep in mind how the movie was shot and how it's supposed to look. Paramount's transfer replicates the source material just fine, meaning that the HD transfer looks like an amateur home movie… because that's how it's supposed to look. Without the DVD on hand to compare it to, it's probably safe to assume that there's a bit more detail here and that the picture is strong and more stable in terms of compression and authoring, but don't go into this one expecting to be wowed by the clarity because the limitations of the source prevent that. In the context of the movie though, it all works very well.

    The primary audio mix on this release is a pretty powerful DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track, though a standard definition Spanish dubbed Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound option is also supplied. Subtitles are provided in English, English SDH, French and Spanish. More so than the visuals, the sound is very important to how this picture works. Subtle background noise and often times result in some of the most effective scares in the picture while a few well placed 'booms' provide the requisite jumps. This is all handled well, but keep in mind that this isn't a flashy mix, rather, it replicates the nature of the production's low-fi origins. That said, dialogue is generally quite clear, channel separation is used effectively and there aren't any problems with balance or with audible defects like hiss. This isn't an overly aggressive track like you might find on the latest action or sci-fi release, but instead it's effectively subtle and more than appropriate.

    Considering how well this movie did in theaters last year, it's disappointing that the extras are so slim on this release. Included here you'll find an alternate ending (one which is considerably better than the theatrical finish) which you can watch on its own or integrated into the feature, and a trailer for Shutter Island. That's it. There are menus and chapter selection and a digital copy of the film is included on a second disc, but there aren't any featurettes, interviews or commentary tracks anywhere to be seen.

    The Final Word:

    The lousy ending and almost barebones nature of this release aren't enough to ruin the movie and Paranormal Activity gets enough right that it's definitely worth seeking out. It's a testament to low budget filmmaking and to how much can be done with so little in the hands of someone with talent and ambition and on top of that it's, at times, pretty damn scary.
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