Paranormal Activity

Editorial

If you want to get ahead in modern Hollywood, work in the Lost Property department. Ever since the Blair Witch tapes were discovered in '99, there's been enough "found footage" movies to keep Cash Converters in second-hand cams for a year.

Shot over seven days with a budget of $11,000, Paranormal Activity's less-is-more approach isn't just in the production — it's on the screen. Here's a movie so brutally committed to simplicity, it doesn't even do plot: just a situation, repeated over and over again, with the deadening regularity of a bad recurring dream. A couple are terrorised by an unseen force. First, they try to film it — then they fight to stay alive. And that's it.

Split between day (where Katie and Micah survey the aftermath) and night, we're slowly drawn into a loop of escalating dread — and it conditions you into a state of anticipation with a minimal masterstroke. Each time the film goes nocturnal, the footage switches, not to shakycam, but to the same static bedroom shot. Because the camera never moves, you're encouraged to scrutinise every single shadow.

Weirdly, there are laughs. If we compile the Worst Movie Boyfriends, Micah Sloat's alpha-male is a dead cert. For all its authentic edge, this is still pulpy poltergeist fiction, and the characters are fixed onto the rails of narrative convention. Filmmaker Oren Peli can only keep the wheels on the ghost train hidden for so long, and the final third caves in to some hokey horror tropes (don't go in the loft!) and a climax that delivers a shuddering jolt but, on further scrutiny, feels suspiciously neat. In search of a thrill, the film loses a little of its "realness".

Simon Crook