thanks!

Normally I hate writing movie reviews and, actually - ok I'm probably not going to put this in the "review" category. I had to write a zillion reviews in film school and my problem is that I'm not really able to properly articulate my feelings towards a film in a manner that is at all pleasant for the reader. So yeah, my reviews blow. Sorry, not my forte. This is more like a jambled mess of my thoughts as they enter my head. And right now they are directed at "Paranormal Activity". So, obviously, if you plan on seeing it don't continue to read - although I'm not entirely sure there's anything to spoil. Here we go!

I have a tendency to actually get scared during certain horror flicks. I'll cry during movies that I find really sad. I take movies super serious, which is why when I see a TERRIBLE movie it can actually make me mad. Now my boyfriend loves horror movies, it's sort of his thing - so when we started hearing all this jive about Paranormal Activity he kept trying to get me to go. For the reason that I tend to get scared, and I had been hearing it was "the scariest movie in years" - I was pretty reluctant. Yesterday he seemed adamant to go to the movies and we were between "The Men Who Stare at Goats" and PA. Goats actually appealed to me, but I knew he really wanted to see PA - sooo I decided to just go. Factoring into my decision was the fact that PA was raking in 85% on rottentomatoes.com - a compilation of every critic and review on the movie. Anything above 80% is usually a sure shot that the movie will at least be worth the experience. So I figured, it'll probably be an awesome movie despite me being freaked out by the subject matter.

The movie had a slow start. But for some reason the editing and the camera work was sort of enough for me to keep hanging on waiting for a pay off. I wish someone could have told me, that pay off would not ever come.

Lets talk about the characters for a second. I strongly believe that in a mockumentary type set-up, your characters have to be both interesting and witty or it can't work. Well shit, lets face it - characters should ALWAYS be interesting, or else what is the point. The guy, Micah, was sort of witty at times - he was somewhat attempting to keep the story going on the dialog front. But the girl, Katie, was just scared the entire time. Why do I care? I can't stand that in that set-up she wasn't ever really funny or cute. You need characters that you can actually invest your interest in as to what happens to them. I understood why Micah was the disbeliever, and why he wanted to challenge the demon - I understand that you need conflict, but it needs to make sense to the viewer. If all you have to do is NOT buy a oujia board, just don't buy a oujia board, eh?

Onto the story!!! It didn't exist. There was so much time building "suspense" that there was essentially no story telling and no answers given. There is this demon that has been haunting Katie since she was 8. The demon's presence gets more noticeable every night. Got it. They give little plot lines here and there that never end up adding up, which is unacceptable to me. What on earth was the point of mentioning that a demon (possibly the same demon) haunted a woman in the 60s? It didn't give any insight into the situation with Katie. The only hint of a plot I took away was that maybe the demon was in love with Katie or just wanted her for himself - which is why he'd scratched the picture of Micah's face and why he burned down Katie's family's house. But even that possibility wasn't made clear.

Nothing bugs me more than a cop out ending. I dabble in screenwriting and I'm a firm believer in NOT spelling things out for your audience, leaving them to their own devices, etc - but for that to work you have to leave enough clues and evidence for the viewer to be able to make those assumptions. I also think that you, as a writer with an ambiguous ending, have to have your own interpretation - what you actually know to be the ending, and if anyone else figures it out good for them, but if they interpret it another way - well that's cool too. PA had an ending that you could interpret in a couple of different ways. However, there was not a trace of any evidence that you could link to the ending in order for it to be the answer. If a script even existed, which I'm not completely sure one did, I get the feeling the writer went: "Dude, it would be so freaky if she just killed her boyfriend at the end! And then like, cut to black!"

The fire in her family's house was never explained, the picture Micah found of her in the crawlspace was, again, not touched on. I'm not saying you have to explain everything, but you have to give something or else why are you mentioning these things? If they don't all connect in some way you're basically throwing a bunch of random occurrences and tragedies together but that doesn't necessarily make it scary.

This movie had potential, and I'll give it credit for tapping into a fear of being terrorized in your own bed from something that you can't run or hide from. The thought of that is retarded scary. But with such a sloppy story and characters that aren't interesting enough to care about, the film ends up being a disgrace to such a fascinating idea and technique. Overhyped to the maxxxx

3/10

I'm also completely open to the possibility that I missed something HUGE somewhere along the way. I'm that confused by how everyone seemingly loves this movie, and I was so disappointed by it. Feel free to try and convince me otherwise, or if I somehow missed a gigantic plot point.