Paranormal Activity (2007)

I watched Paranormal Activity last night. I thought it was a pretty effective scary film (though I didn't like the ending much). It's famous for being one of those Cinderella stories. The film was made for $15,000 in 2007 and was seen at a couple of scary film festivals. Someone saw it and loved it and it eventually ended up in Hollywood. According to Wikipedia, Hollywood wanted to scrap the original and do a big budget replacement to show but the guy who created the original convinced them to do some test screenings and those did well. So they released the original and made a ton of money. Wikipedia has the gross being at just under $200 million. A sequel is in the works.

The plot is pretty simple. A young couple live in a house and are haunted by something. The guy, Micah (the names are the names of the real actors), buys a video camera to see if they can capture something on video. In the more effective moments, you can see and hear things happening through the camera when the couple are asleep (a door opening and shutting, Katie getting out of bed and standing over Micah for hours, etc.).

You quickly learn that the hauntings have followed Katie around since she was a child, when she would feel breathing near hear and a shadow standing over her bed. You also learn that her childhood home was burned down and it may have been this thing.

A psychic visits and reveals to them that the hauntings are from a demon, not a ghost. He refers them to a colleague who specializes in demons, but Micah convinces Katie not to call. They can handle it themselves.

As Micah attempts to confront the demon, trying to talk to it with a microphone and bringing a Ouija board home, the hauntings escalate in intensity. Micah and Katie fight a lot, and, as the psychic had warned, the demon feeds off the negative energy.

Towards the end, more dramatic things happen. After hearing some crashing in the hallway, they discover the opening to the attic has been moved. Micah goes up to investigate and discovers a childhood photo of Katie that has been burned (in the house fire from her past). In other episode, Micah sprinkles baby powder along the hallway and they wake up to see non-human footprints leading into their bedroom. They watch the video and can actually see the footprints being made. One night, Katie is dragged out of bed and down the hallway by an invisible presence and during the struggle, as Micah attempts to grab her, she is bitten in the back by the demon.

They have finally had enough and Micah decides they need to leave immediately. However, he discovers Katie in a sleep-like state, holding a cross so hard that her hand is bleeding. He freaks out and burns the cross and the found photo in the fireplace. Later, her tells Katie they are leaving but she is sleeping in the bed and says that she does not want to leave. You realize that the demon has possessed her.

That night, Katie sleep-walks down to the kitchen and then begins to scream. Micah runs down to see what is going on and their is a struggle. A moment later, Katie walks back up into the bedrooms. Before you see her enter the doorway, Micah's body is hurled into the room, knocking over the camera. Katie, her shirt covered in blood, walks into the room and begins to crawl around Micah's body. She then eyes the camera and lunges forward in a growl (didn't like this last bit).

The DVD has an alternate ending, which I didn't watch. In that ending, Katie apparently walks up to the camera with a knife in her hand and then slits her own throat. Wikipedia has another ending where she simply sits on the bed in a daze. Police arrive a few days later to find her still there. While they attempt to talk to her, with a knife still in her hand, a door slams shut and she is shot and killed.

Overall, a pretty effective film. The fact that most of the stuff happens on a video camera while the couple are asleep is pretty scary. And the way it is filmed, on the handheld camera, limits what you can see on film so you can't see what's around the corner. My only beef is that the ending, with Katie possesses and growling like some monster, didn't fit the tone of the rest of the film and seemed pretty cheesy. If I had my choice I would have tried a couple of different tacks. Either no one comes up after the struggle downstairs, but there is just silence and then the camera goes dark. Or Katie walks back upstairs with a knife in her hand, walks up to the camera and then simply turned it off. And I would have avoided the postscript at the end.