Balaji's Thots

Paranormal Activity follows The Blair Witch Project route by disguising itself as raw footage from a video camera rather than a real film made by professionals. The film plays like footage obtained from the camcorder of a couple who moved into a house in San Diego. We learn from the footage that the wife thinks she has been haunted since her childhood years and sees the same in this house too while the husband pooh-poohs her experiences and is more interested in capturing whats happening on camera.

When it works, the film is undeniably creepy. It plays on our fears by showing us what happens when the couple is asleep – a time when we are unaware of what goes on around us. Even simple sounds and occurrences are capable of seeming creepy during that time and the film capitalizes on this. And when the camera is handheld and we see only what it sees (like when the husband visits the attic or simply pushes aside the blinds), thoughts about whats outside the edges of our vision and what we are going to see next keeps us on edge.

The problem is that this creepiness is not sustained and daylight intervenes between these episodes. As the couple analyze the footage captured the previous night, the intensity is drained and so we start from square one the next night. As a result, while the happenings get more serious each night, this does not translate into an equivalent escalation of suspense or tension. The payoff to the suspense is also not adequate. The adage that imagined horrors are scarier than what we are shown onscreen doesn’t hold true here and what actually happens doesn’t whet the appetite considering the build-up.

Paranormal Activity is clever but not really scary.