Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Paranormal Activity (2009)

This is topic Paranormal Activity (2009) in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 10-13-2009, 01:44 PM:

A skeptical San Diego stock trader buys a video camera to capture evidence of the demon that his girlfriend claims has been following her throughout her life. He looses his skepticism, and right quickly too.

So this is basically The Exorcist meets the original The Haunting via The Blair Witch Project, in fact, the whole “this footage was found by the police” conceit is taken so far that there is no studio logo, titles or credits, just a single copyright board. And it’s . . . OK. Not really very scary and nowhere near worth the hype, every potentially frightening moment is telegraphed in advance by ominous sound effects (and let it be said that the filmmakers have seen the aforementioned The Haunting many, many times, and it shows, with many visual and sound refrences).

On the plus side: the performers are very good, and the actress who plays the young woman is actually pretty terrific. It certainly doesn't drag either. It builds up gradually scare-wise to the conclusion, but it does go on for a little too long. Also, they are smart enough to leave most of the visuals to your imagination and not to show too much, although the last shot is a real eye-roller. [Roll Eyes]

Worth a $6.00 before noon matinee, but probably not much more.

Posted by Kurt Zupin (Member # 2751) on 10-13-2009, 08:10 PM:

I hate scary movies, never been a fan of horror. That said, we've been playing this for the past two weeks. Two weeks ago, we only played it Thursday, Friday and Saturday at Midnight. Then opened it up this past Friday to a full schedule. I watched it on Friday and I have to say I wasn't really scared. It has its moments and a few WTF moments. Its worth checking out, if not just to see what you can do with an $11,000 budget.

3/5 [thumbsup]

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-29-2009, 09:15 PM:

Here's the alternate ending that everyone says is so much better than the theatrtical ending:

http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=15591&count=0

I think that ending was, perhaps, the second most stupid thing I have ever seen. I am glad that I didn't see the entire movie. It is only better than Blair Witch because the camera wasn't having a constant spaz attack. By the way, that's a hell of a tape in that camera. I gotta go to Best Buy and look for one o' them 24+ hour High Definition videotapes!

Posted by Mark Strube (Member # 4190) on 10-30-2009, 02:59 AM:

quote:
By the way, that's a hell of a tape in that camera. I gotta go to Best Buy and look for one o' them 24+ hour High Definition videotapes!

The boyfriend character makes it a point to show that the camera is feeding to a computer via firewire.

I found it extremely creepy. I think they could've done more with the nighttime portions, since I think they went almost too far with the "let your imagination do the work" theory... but it's quite effective.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 10-30-2009, 02:15 PM:

Lets put it this way:
At least I was getting paid to screen it.

Put it another way:
If I was a demon following some woman and her husband was that annoying/moronic, I'd kill him too.