Saturday, October 10, 2009
Paranormal Activity
I first heard about this movie a few weeks ago. We tried to go see the college town viewings when it first came out but they sold out right away. Fortunately it opened at one theatre in town this weekend. We saw it last night and I have to say, I think this may be the scariest movie I have ever seen. Although I love them, horror movies don't generally scare me. I don't find them realistic enough to usually generate legitimate scares. Too many rely on gore (which is gross, not scary), over-the-top weirdness (which loses the base of realism for me), or add too much comedy, which I love but it's not scary. I know a lot of people found Blair Witch to be scary, but again, I think that movie leaves too much to the imagination. I like that aspect of horror but when all it is is off-screen scares I feel a bit cheated. Paranormal Activity is a movie that does use off screen scares but it also places plenty of them right on screen too. I'm not going to go into detail, because I don't want to give anything away, but I will say, I began to tear up at times because of the scares and that never happens to me. I know some critics have said it's too much of a slow burn, but I appreciated that it added to the realism of the movie. The ending was just 'eh' for me but the rest was well worth it.
I've been waiting a long time for a movie that genuinely terrified me as much as this one did. As we left the theatre it was clear people had been disturbed by what they saw. The girl next to me turned to her friends and said, "well I won't be going to bed tonight." And I heard another guy reassuring his girlfriend that the lights would stay on tonight.
