Things that go bump (or just stand there and stare at you) in the night

Paranormal Activity, according to the buzz, is the new Blair Witch Project: a scary movie made on a very low budget by non-Hollywood indie filmmakers which is supposed to make you scream and jump out of your seat using just a creepy mood and old-fashioned scare tactics with virtually no special effects. Both movies purport to be compilations of found footage, taken by amateurs who wind up the victims of some supernatural force. And both were cleverly marketed over the Internet and through film festival showings. I loved The Blair Witch Project, but was disappointed in Paranormal Activity, perhaps because my expectations were too high. But I also think that this new movie, while clearly inspired by the earlier film, didn't improve on it or do anything to fix its flaws.

A young unmarried suburban couple, Micah Sloat and Katie Featherstone (pictured in a rare light moment at right), have been bothered by strange bumps and sounds in the night and have bought a video camera which they set up in their bedroom, hoping to catch footage of whatever is causing the disturbances. At first, very little is captured on film, but soon, doors start slamming shut and sheets are being lifted up on their own. As we see more strange occurrences (some even in the daytime), we become privy to their deteriorating home life: she's pissed off that he's become obsessed with the camera, and he's pissed off that she hadn't told him that this kind of haunting has happened to her before.

And that's really about it. The visitations become a bit more graphic, though there is no gore and, as far as I could tell, almost no camera tricks until (possibly) the last minute of the film—the very last shot looks like it was CGI-enhanced. The creepiest stuff is the simplest; a couple of times, Katie gets up in the middle of the night and just stands there in the bedroom, stock still, for hours at a time, staring at her sleeping boyfriend. My biggest gasp came when a light flicks on downstairs (where no one is supposed to be). There is a loud bass rumble whenever the invisible force is present (shades of the Jaws theme music), but Micah and Katie don't seem to hear it, which leads me to believe that it was added in post-production.

The pluses: as I noted above, much hair-raising creepiness is produced with just old-fashioned atmosphere; the leads are not as irritating as some of the characters in Blair Witch Project (although Katie's whining starts to get a bit old); Micah looks good in a t-shirt. The minuses: there is no context (very little background for the characters is given) and no real narrative drive—once the basic story is established, events and characters don't develop or deepen. A ghost-hunter is brought in for a couple of scenes; he tells them it's a demon, not a ghost, that is responsible and gives them the name of a demonology expert, but nothing comes of that at all. There is no rhyme or reason for the ending; the film doesn't have a climax so much as a stopping point, as if the director said, we gotta stop this at 90 minutes no matter what. Its shortness is a plus, but I was left not caring about either character, and what little ambiguity is left at the end is uninteresting, unlike Blair Witch Project in which the ambiguous ending was genuinely startling and haunting.

It may not be fair to keep comparing this film to Blair Witch, but it brings on these comparisons itself: the found footage basis, the rough style of shooting, the ever-moving hand-held camera, lack of gore or effects, lack of background music, unknown actors whose real first names are used for their characters, and an ending that doesn’t explain things. For me, the biggest flaw in Blair Witch is the lack of a script; while that may have kept things fresh, it also led to long pointless stretches of people yelling and cursing at each other. This movie also seems to have been minimally scripted, and though the long pointless stretches aren't as long here, I wish we had gotten to know the characters better. For me, I guess it came down to expectations; it just didn’t match up to the buzz and reviews. Had I seen it opening night, or in a packed auditorium, my experience might have been different.