Paranormal Activity (2007)
Directed by Oren Peli
After a young, middle-class couple moves into what seems like a typical suburban house, they become increasingly disturbed by a presence that may or may not be demonic, but is certainly the most active in the middle of the night.
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18 films that influenced Paranormal Activity
What critics say influenced Paranormal Activity
Like horror classics ranging from Cat People (1942) to The Haunting (1963) to The Blair Witch Project (1999), it suggests its terrors rather than explicitly showing them, which leaves far more to the imagination and sends more genuine chills up the spine.
That's even less than “The Blair Witch Project,” the breakout hit from 1999 that “Paranormal Activity” will be most compared to -- for obvious reasons, though “Paranormal” is the scarier of the two.
Comparisons to The Blair Witch Project aren't entirely off base, either, in that Paranormal Activity is about a decade past its sell-by date with a tale of irritating technophilia that would have felt more current in the Y2K Ludditism of 1999 than it did in the resigned technocracy of 2009--explanation in part for why it's already out of the conversation and never stirred much outrage or controversy when it was causing audiences of teens to collectively fake-shudder the way festival audiences collectively fake-cathect.
It has been dubbed a phenomenon and compared to the 1999 low-budget sleeper hit The Blair Witch Project.
Granted, the movie is less inspired or original than The Blair Witch Project in its conjuring of offscreen spaces and forces, potent as these remain in the newer film, and it suffers by moving some of the occult "backstory" that Blair Witch savvily dispatched at the outset into the third quarter of the film, and barely seeming sure of why it's doing this.
Ten years ago, Daniel Meyrick and Eduardo Sanchez become overnight sensations when their no-budget shocker The Blair Witch Project (1999) captured the demise of three doco-makers; both Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s Spanish-language [REC] (2007) and John Erik Dowdle’s shot-for-shot English-language remake Quarantine (2008) utilised found-footage ‘wobbly-cam’ superbly; Matt Reeves’ big-budget Cloverfield (2008) did not.
Sure, he borrows heavily from the last great modern haunted house film – Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1983).
It seems more likely that this is merely recycling the kind of growing obsession of the hero we’ve seen for years in movies like Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943).
It seems more likely that this is merely recycling the kind of growing obsession of the hero we’ve seen for years in movies like Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943).
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William Castle — the horror producer who wired movie seats to produce electrical jolts during screenings of “The Tingler” in 1959 — would be proud.
Like horror classics ranging from Cat People (1942) to The Haunting (1963) to The Blair Witch Project (1999), it suggests its terrors rather than explicitly showing them, which leaves far more to the imagination and sends more genuine chills up the spine.
For a great classic haunted house film with still-effective shocks and chills (even after multiple viewings) and creepy atmosphere to spare, I would recommend “The Haunting” (1963 version – NOT the remake).
Paranormal Activity obviously must have reminded him of his first major film Duel (1971).
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Like horror classics ranging from Cat People (1942) to The Haunting (1963) to The Blair Witch Project (1999), it suggests its terrors rather than explicitly showing them, which leaves far more to the imagination and sends more genuine chills up the spine.
I have to note that I didn't see "Paranormal Activity" at an afternoon press screening surrounded by know-it-all film critics who noted its debts to Robert Wise's " The Haunting " before walking into the sun's soothing, rational bright beams.
Well formed films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Exorcist don’t need their legacy illegitimized by a short attention span generation that can’t remember past the easy access days of ‘80s direct to video horror.
Writer/director Oren Peli has essentially taken a simple premise that�s been done before, i.e. in Poltergeist, The Entity and The Exorcist, and, with a shoe-string budget of only $11,000, has created an creepy, suspenseful and psychologically terrifying experience without the relying on blood and guts as a means of entertainment and shock value.
Think The Blair Witch Project meets The Exorcist and then dial it up a few notches, and you have an approximation of the subtle but terrifying atmosphere of Paranormal Activity.
Comparisons with The Exorcist have been made, but Paranormal Activity feels more like a Gen-Y Poltergeist.
I've seen scarier movies — “Drag Me,” for one, plus “The Exorcist,” “Rosemary's Baby,” “The Omen,” even “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” and the first two “Poltergeist” films can keep me up some nights.