Paranormal Activity: A MUST WATCH!!

Okay, so those of us who love horror cinema had given up on Hollywood after Blair Witch. Saw and Hostel were huge hits but cater to a slightly different taste in cinema—torture porn and cannot properly be called ‘Hollywood’ I suppose.

We, who enjoyed atmospheric horror in the tune of The Haunting or even Murnau’s masterful Nosferatu—had to explore farther a-field—Japan especially and Korea for our chills and thrills. We tried on suicidal schoolgirls (Memento Mori, Whispering Corridors) and dead, wet children (Ringu, Dark Water, Ju-on, Acacia, et. al.) instead of serial killers and largely liked what we found.

   My search has been especially intense because I am teaching a course on Global Horror even as I write this. When my students—all of whom, I’m delighted to report, are serious horror geeks—breathlessly reported that an extremely inexpensive film called Paranormal Activity (PA) was generating a great deal of buzz, I was considerably skeptical. Not that I don’t trust their instincts, I do, but their last suggestions had been Teeth and Sorority Row. The former left me largely flummoxed; the latter was so bad that even my indulgent girlfriend, Allison, threatened to storm out of the theatre.

   Anyway, on this particular Saturday—a sunny, blustery fall afternoon in Chicago—the wonderful, generous Allison agreed to watch (yet another) horror film with me. (I tip my hat to you, Allison, for always coming through to humor my slightly bizarre taste in cinema! Most of my other peeps gently, but politely declined. Now who’s getting the last laugh as they scramble to catch PA belatedly? Hah, bully for you skeptics and doubting Thomases.) Off we trotted to our favorite theatre in Evanston—me, cautiously hopeful; Allison—largely resigned about another wasted afternoon of her life.

   We both loved the film—an event rare in and of itself. I don’t want to give the film away—I think everyone should watch it, but I will share some of its elements that particularly impressed me. First, PA puts a new spin on the word ‘shoestring’; Oren Peli shot it for a paltry $ 11,000 in a week in his house and the film legendarily grossed 1.2 million in limited release, either for the apocryphal legend of Spielberg believing it to be cursed, or general word of mouth, or both.

   I saw it the weekend it was released in a packed theatre of nervous, jittery, screaming audiences. Remember folks, we have become so desensitized that it takes eyeballs being torn out for savvy audiences like us to work up a shiver. Yet, here we were 100 odd—very odd, some might say—people creeped out of our wits looking in on a young couple’s bedroom. Not a mean feat, Mr. Peli.

   The film revolves around Micah (yuppie daytime trader) and his girlfriend Katie (pretty, well-behaved, desirable) and the events that occur in their home over a span of a few nights. Katie believes she is being haunted by a malevolent demon; Micah characteristically scoffs at her ‘feminine’ and thus irrational whimsies. In order to decisively disprove Katie of her anxiety, Micah decides to videotape her all time and especially when they sleep at night. (I admit I had to keep my eyes shut a lot; the jerky handheld shots gave me a headache).

   Peli keeps a tight reign on the build-up of suspense; in fact, PA is most enjoyable for its gradual build-up of anxiety to an almost fever pitch. It is also about the couple psychologically unraveling under the strain of a threat they can barely perceive, let alone comprehend. For me, and I would hazard many others, the film is especially compelling for its representation of modern, metropolitan, heterosexual coupledom.

   Micah displays a dry—often irritating—sense of humor and his cocksure, patronizing attitude towards Katie’s fear is both appalling and instantly recognizable. Micah is your regular frat-boy, smug, supremely confident about everything, and determined to be the man of the house. They’re a generic white couple in a generic suburban home, tastefully but unimaginatively decorated—think Ikea meets Bed, Bath & Beyond. The performances are excellent, Katie’s mounting desperation a perfect foil to Micah’s insensitive, breezy blathering—he even brings home an ouija board to interact with the demon, in spite of Katie’s frantic entreaties that he not do so. Micah simply does not listen to his partner. After all, she is a woman—petite, beautiful, often afraid, who knits and makes bead jewelry—the archetypal little woman who is now also a Lindsey Lohan look-alike.

   The ‘reality TV’ aesthetic of the handheld camera, following the couple as they go about their daily lives is especially effective in generating and sustaining ‘realistic’ tension; the tour-de-force moments of shock occur before a static camera while the couple sleeps. Katie doesn’t sleep very well. We are often in real time with the couple, a fact that serves to intensify both our involvement and our dread.

   Finally, after watching PA, we’re forced to ask: what exactly haunts this modern, liberal, upwardly mobile couple? Is it just Katie who is haunted, or, is it a haunted home they inhabit—and remember, we never, ever step out of the house. Could it be that heterosexual coupledom has itself come to be strange and monstrous? PA does not give us the comfort of closure; it leaves us in a limbo of acute disquiet, pondering our lives, relationships and losses. Watch it if you enjoy suspense, but even if you don’t, this one is something of a watershed. Not to be missed. I’m looking forward to Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, my students have sworn to its relevance, bloodiness and intensity. After PA I trust them implicitly.