A deliciously twisted departure from the festive season’s forthcoming slew of nauseating, family flicks, Paranormal Activity is among the few, genuinely frightening horror movies of the modern age. Befitting today’s reality TV-obsessed culture, this documentary-like masterwork captures the universal essence of primal, unadulterated fear.
Introducing a disarmingly mundane portrayal of suburbia, writer-director, Oren Peli exhibits a young couple’s struggle to coexist with an increasingly sinister, supernatural entity. In a bid to comprehend these inexplicable, nightly disturbances, day-trader, Micah (Micah Sloat), documents countless nocturnal hours of footage via a high-definition video camera. As his sleepwalking girlfriend, Katie (Katie Featherston) finds herself relentlessly tormented by the presence, Micah’s initially playful home videos degenerate into a maelstrom of demonic chaos and violence.
While the movie’s gritty, homemade aesthetic prompts obvious associations with The Blair Witch Project, Peli has created an altogether more claustrophobic, if occasionally static piece. Rejecting the archetypal abandoned cabins and gothic mansions of past directorial endeavours, Paranormal Activity ushers fear into the formerly comforting, now inescapable realm of domesticity.
Demonstrating a notably Hitchcockian approach to the genre, a grim procession of dimly-lit scenes and teasingly restricted camera angles provoke the human imagination’s limitless capacity for terror. And though the horror genre has lately become saturated with innumerable gore-porn titles, Peli’s less-is-more attitude to blood has finally created a satisfyingly menacing experience.
OVERALL SUMMARY
A voyeuristic, evocative nightmare, Paranormal Activity witnesses the systematic ruin of normality, as suburban comfort turns unexpectedly sour. More terrifying than the past decade’s combined total of big-budget bloodbaths, Oren Peli’s debut offering will guarantee sleepless nights across the globe.
