Paranormal Activity (2009)

Happy Halloween… month! It’s that time of year where the evils of living in a world where skeletons and pumpkins aren’t common decorations are exorcized from my body and I go from a shriveled, cobweb-covered husk of a man to a halfway functioning person; think King Theoden in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Anyway, it’s time for my annual horror event, and this year it’s Paranormal Octoberty, highlighting a month of ghosts and/or demonic possession. What, you thought I’d review something more mainstream like Halloween? Oh, you sweet summer child, why would I review that franchise in October? I’m saving that for an April down the road, obviously.

But wait… there are 13 Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in October… Spooky number aside, there are only 7 films in the Paranormal Activity franchise. Oh how weird, I can’t believe I didn’t plan for this well in advance! How embarrassing!

So anyway, Paranormal Activity opens with Paramount pictures thanking the families of Micah (Mr. Micah Sloat, apparently pronounced MEE-kah and I’m not convinced this isn’t some kind of trolling) and Katie (Ms. Katie Featherston) as if the events were real and we’re watching two normal people instead of two actors playing versions of themselves; how very The Blair Witch Project of the movie. I’m sure that will be the last time in this post I talk about that movie! Strange things have been happening around Katie on and off since a little before her house mysteriously burned down when she was 8, but have increased lately to the point where Micah buys a camera and decides to record her sleeping. Not in a sexual way, of course! Katie forces him to turn the camera off when they have sex. The titular paranormal activity starts off with very small stuff–Katie’s keys getting knocked to the floor without there being a cat to blame–and escalates when Micah gets frustrated with the pace of the movie. I mean, the pace of the haunting. He’s just… the worst. For example, I’m not really one to put much fear into a Ouija board (trademark Hasbro, owners of Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons), but if my partner was haunted and specifically asked me not to bring one into the house to communicate with their particular demon, pretty fuckin’ sure I’d listen!

Oh, yeah, Katie’s being haunted by a demon, not a ghost. A psychic picks up the difference and refers the couple to a demonologist who never appears in the film, but it’s important to know that this is a full-on demon. It even has three toes, as we see when Micah dumps white powder (cocaine and/or baby powder) around their bedroom door. Not sure why an invisible demon needs to actually walk around, leaving evidence and causing the floor to creak under its weight, or why it wants to turn on and off light switches, but what do I know about demons? A fair amount, but whatever, I suppose it makes for found footage evidence. Katie eventually starts to fall under the demon’s control, leading to the 21st night of filming where after creepily standing over a sleeping Micah, she wanders downstairs before shrieking and calling out for her boyfriend. What spooked her so much? It’s not explained here, so for all we know it could be a time traveling Hispanic kid. But a fully possessed Katie kills Micah off screen and we get to see her toss his body at the camera before she snarls and attacks, closing out the movie. There’s also an alternate ending where cops show up and kill Katie when she startles them–because ACAB–but writer/director Oren Peli is wrong, that ending sucks and the people who forced him to change it were right. I’d potentially take the other, other ending where a possessed Katie slits her throat on camera, but that messes things up for the sequels.

I lied when I said I wasn’t gonna talk about The Blair Witch Project. You couldn’t pay me to shut up about that movie! But to the point, up until Paranormal Activity, Blair Witch was the most profitable movie of all time… when compared to its budget. Don’t come at me, Avatar fanatics, you win “most profitable without caveats.” But this little horror found footage move that could managed to break that record pretty soundly. And the two really do have a lot in common: actors playing fictional versions of themselves documenting their doom at the hands of a malevolent force of evil. I’ll always personally prefer Blair Witch out of the two, but I will say that as far as I can tell, actors Katie and Micah weren’t tormented by the filmmakers and were just acting when freaking out, so I suppose that gives Paranormal Activity a moral edge? Because that’s what we’re all wondering about–which horror movie is the most ethical.

Also hey, hi there, before I close this out, does Oren Peli have a foot fetish? A lot of people are asking!