Paranormal Activity Movie Review

Paranormal Activity is, perhaps, the perfect horror film. When compared to movies like Friday the 13^th or Dawn of the Dead though (as fantastic as those films are), it seems hardly appropriate to put Paranormal Activity in the same genre.

The concept revolves around a young couple, Micah and Katie, who purchase a camera to try to document some of the unexplainable phenomena that have been occurring in their house. Not only do they succeed in capturing some odd occurrences on tape, but their attempts to contact it and Micah’s provocation incite the spirit into increasingly pronounced, and threatening activity.

Made on $10,000 and shot on video in the “found footage” format, Paranormal Activity is a masterwork of subtlety. Every aspect of filmmaking from the sound design to the editing, pacing, and framing build just the right amount of tension, but never go so far as to become unbelievable, which in turn makes the film all that more terrifying.

And Paranormal Activity truly is terrifying. Other films get cheap scares with eerie music and monsters jumping out of closets, but writer/director Oren Peli makes something as simple as a door moving into a moment more eerie and legitimately scary than any cinematic psycho killer has ever achieved.

If you do not like to be scared by a movie, then you should not see Paranormal Activity. For everyone else, no film since you still thought The Blair Witch Project was real comes more highly recommended to absolutely scare the pants off you. Paranormal Activity is horror filmmaking at its finest and certainly the product of brilliance.