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PARANORMAL ACTIVITY Review:

- Talk about clever marketing. Rarely if ever has a movie gotten such a sudden groundswell of fan support, despite no major media marketing. Just a couple of glowing reviews, well-received film-fest screenings, great word of mouth, and a brilliant, deceptively low-key strategy from Paramount - where they have been asking fans to "demand" that the film be released in their areas. After a very limited number of midnight screenings in key markets, Paranormal Activity went on to explode in theaters across the country this past weekend. Despite showing in less than 500 theaters, the movie made over $7 million. Not bad. I knew that this one had buzz, but I was definitely unprepared for the completely sold-out theater on Saturday night. People were actually sitting in the aisles. And there was a huge energy in the theater. Fans were clamoring to see this one. Thanks to effective viral marketing and tons of buzz, Paranormal Activity had, suddenly and without warning, become THE movie to see on this particular October weekend. So the question remains - how good is this movie? Is it really as scary as people say? I don't want to get *too* caught up in the hype, but I will say that this is a very smart, very cool, very, very, very scary movie. A perfect pre-Halloween flick, I'd 100%recommend seing this one in the theater. Half the fun is hearing the audience scream in terror.

Paranormal Activity is basically a "found footage" movie, similar to The Blair Witch Project. The premise here is that we are seeing the home-movie footage shot by a young couple - Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston) - that have just moved into a new home together in San Diego. The couple appears to be happy and healthy, but there's one problem: of late, Katie, a student, has begun experiencing strange things at night - whispers, doors opening and shutting, odd sounds, etc. Micah, a day trader and technology enthusiast, begins filming he and Katie around the house, and keeps a camera rolling while they are sleeping at night. His idea is that if anything out of the ordinary happens, he'll capture it on camera. And sure enough, some pretty crazy $#%& goes down.

I know that at some point, the popular consensus was that found footage movies were lame and gimmicky. But people tend to forget just how effective Blair Witch was when it was first released - how it captured people's imaginations and blurred the line between reality and fiction. When done right, this kind of film can be a unique and gripping experience. And Paranormal Activity knows how to push just the right butttons. This isn't a movie where HUGE stuff happens. But man, they make the most out of the little moments when all seems normal, except that something ... well, something is not quite right.

Throughout the movie, we get daytime scenes that establish the characters and how they are dealing with all the weirdness going on around them. And our two leads do a pretty darn good job of making us believe that they are just two normal twenty-somethings. The performances are pretty naturalistic, and definitely effective. But then, when the lights go down, that's when we *know* that something crazy might happen. Every time we cut to the shot of Micah's camera set in a stationary position on his bedside dresser, as he and Katie sleep, you can't help but tense up and brace for terror.

And like I said, in this movie it's the little things that get you most. But the feeling of watching real events happening to real people - the feeling of watching normal people just like you, in a normal house just like yours - makes the whole affair that much more genuinely creepy. I definitely checked around the corners of my apartment when I got home. And man, rarely have I see so many grown men scream out in terror while watching a movie. Like I said, see this one in a crowded theater if you can, because the reactions from the audience are bound to be entertaining.

Now, I do think that the movie can get a bit hokey and even repetitive at times. And the low-budget limitations do occasionally become obvious. Once in a while, the acting gets a little cheesy, especially when an excorsist is called in to examine the house. That said, there is some pretty effective comic relief throughout the movie, and you do need those moments to let you exhale a bit from all the built-up tension.

There is so much tension in part because the movie really is expertly-paced and crafted. There is a real art to how the intensity is slowly cranked up, until by movie's end, a real, palpable atmosphere of sheer terror and dread has been created. Paranormal Activity is worthy of the hype - especially when you consider how simple of a movie this really is. I love the fact that a movie with two unknown actors, minimal f/x, and an ultra-low-budget can succeed so well at telling a memorable, terrifying horror story where so many other, glossier movies fail. Like Blair Witch, this one will make you want to go home, turn on the camcorder, and see what kind of scary story you and your friends can whip up.

Paranormal Activity is certainly rough around the edges, but you have to give it a ton of credit for being such an awesomely effective ghost story. It's easy to go against the hype and be a hater, but sometimes you simply have to admire an underdog movie that attains unlikely but well-deserved success. And yes, it's really that scary.

My Grade: A-