Paranormal Activity
Synopsis
What Happens When You Sleep?
After a young, middle class couple moves into a suburban 'starter' tract house, they become increasingly disturbed by a presence that may or may not be somehow demonic but is certainly most active in the middle of the night. Especially when they sleep. Or try to.
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Apparently the inspiration for this film came from the fact that a box of laundry detergent fell from a shelf in the director's home. It was placed far in the back of the shelf and there was no logical explanation as to how it could possibly have fallen.
I curse that box to this very day as the film it has spawned caused me to lose a lot of sleep. It is impressive what the director managed to achieve with the tiniest of budgets, but he had no right to scare me this much.
If there's one thing that scares me in horror films it's a lack of control over what happens to you. The scenes where the poor unfortunate…
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Believe it or not, I hadn't actually seen Paranormal Activity before. I had an idea of what to expect because I had heard so much about the film before, but I didn't expect it to be even more boring than I had anticipated.
I could go on about the shaky cam and the 'found footage' aspect, but I'll put that weary argument aside. What I will say is it's boring in that the horror is too premeditated and the characters are uninteresting.
Despite the level of character development and time spent with the two lead characters, it's hard to care about what's happening to them. On top of this, the horror is set up in a way that the audience knows something is going to happen. Therefore, it relies too heavily on the 'jump scare' aspect, of which are few.
Based on that display, I'm guessing the sequels aren't worth the time...
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I am going to watch all four Paranormal Activities. I love found footage horror films, they are my crux, my kryptonite. Strangely enough, the most popular ones (these four) are some of the worst. They can be summed up by this comic: i.imgur.com/pmGZWAz.jpg
This film encompasses the classic ''Hanging a delicious tomato in front of your face promising you that once you get to the end of this road you'll get to eat this delicious tomato.'' stance you will find in many found footage films, and as expected, the tomato promised to you has turned out to be a play-doh tomato. Creating and building an atmosphere is very important in horror, that doesn't mean you need to drag out the… -
This pretty much sums everything up.
The film consists of:
70% pure boredom. 5% creepy scenes and scares. 25% live moron action.
I can't feel sorry for, or care about what happens to people when they act like senseless clodhoppers. -
The wife made me watch this before the two back to back fottball matches for super sunday.
What a pile of wank. One star each for the girl's cleavage and the fact she walked around with shorts on for almost the duration of the "film". -
I second what Del said here. I actually wonder if that film that the people in the adverts were watching in the cinema where they were all jumping and screaming was an entirely different film and we all just got hoodwinked into watching this pile of crap.
Also, does anyone seriously find that bit where she gets dragged down the hallway anything other than utterly hilarious?
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This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
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An instant classic in minimalism horror.
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Don't believe the hype! There is not one SINGLE scary moment in this entire film. It is 100 minutes of watching a couple hang out at home, with an occasional slamming door or knocking. So if that's all it takes to terrify you, then more power to ya, but otherwise this is just another case of manufactured (and wholly undeserved) hype. How anyone thought this was a) a good film or b) scary at all is completely beyond me.
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"I see stupid people"
The opening shot shows an incredibly large television obscuring their living room window. My initial thought was, "what kind of morons would obstruct the trajectory of natural light with a behemoth-bastard-sized telly"?
Oh...
... these kind of morons.I tried. I really did. I'd given this franchise a wide berth because I personally don't really dig found footage movies and I was certain that everything I saw here would be derivative of The Blair Witch Project (which, oddly enough... I actually liked).
Figured the best time to watch this would be late at night... in the dark... visiting my parent's new house (so... unfamiliar territory with plenty of alien creaks, bangs and random house noises)... I've… -
A young couple seems to be experiencing, well, the title, and they investigate. The movie is made up of their video footage.
This was hyped beyond all measure, which resulted in the predictable backlash. But the thing is, it more than lives up to the hype: it’s terrifying. I'm a fan of two other shot-by-the-protagonists horror films, The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, but even if those two didn't do it for you, this one should. The actors are better, the motivations more believable, and the camera work much less shaky. What makes it so effective is that the camera becomes our surrogate, so that anyone open to suspension of disbelief will feel as if they are experiencing the film’s events first-hand. If you let it under your skin, this movie is hard to shake.
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good
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La verdad no se cual es el miedo que le tienen a ver esta película, puedo decir que lo único que "medio" me asusto, fue en la escena final cuando lanzan al chamo hacia la cámara y fue por que no le estaba prestando la suficiente atención a la película. No me gusto el hecho que le tuve que subir mucho volumen a la TV para poder entender que estaban diciendo, (ademas que VUDU no tiene sistema de SAP o de subtítulos), y la trama fue demasiado monótona... En resumen, estos 3 factores hicieron que ver esa película fuera una experiencia demasiado decepcionante.
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Too long. to tell a 30 lines of story. This movie is freaking annoying.
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Some films take the slow approach when building up the suspense, but Paranormal Activity is cinematic molasses. We’re informed there’s something going on in the house almost immediately, but it’s about thirty minutes in — of a 90 minute movie — before we see the first hint, and even that’s just a door gently swinging. Things do gradually start to pick up, and the last twenty minutes or so are genuinely creepy, but most of the film consists of watching two people lying in bed or lounging around the house, punctuated by the occasional “THUMP”. Not only is it not frightening — I could forgive it for that — it’s not even interesting. Might as well be "Settling House: the Movie". Read full review.