** Disclaimer: This rant includes spoilers so I strongly suggest that if you do actually want to watch this film and attempt to enjoy it by all means but you should probably stop reading this article. This is not designed to ruin everyone else’s enjoyment, but stops them wasting hours of their lives on films I perceived to being a bit poo. While I may not discuss the entire plot, there will be elements whereby any attempt to create a facade by the film will be shattered. You have been warned! **

As a huge fan of the horror genre I was swept up with the excitement and hype which came attached to this film and was a sure fire purchase on DVD. This film was supposed to be the next big thing as far as horror films went, however, it fell well short of the mark.

Why It’s Crap

The characters are just simply overreacting to slightest thing all the time even before anything remotely atmospheric starts and you lose empathy with anyone on the screen immediately as a result. The boyfriend Micah can only be described as an annoying douche who doesn’t believe anything which the girlfriend Katie says. Katie by the same token seems to be constantly on the verge of catatonic because a lamp shade is swinging or there’s a bang downstairs when the lights are off.

The whole film is totally “shaky first person camera” like the Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, and like the two aforementioned abominations which instead of portraying the gritty realism of being in the first person, instead you the viewer are only afflicted by motion sickness as the view is about as static as doing a pirouette on a catamaran during a typhoon. It’s presentation is more like a documentary rather than a feature film, which doesn’t actually make it less relevant or inciteful for that matter.

Katie gets bitten by a...demon?? Since when do manifesting spirits actually bite you?

The whole “haunting” scenes were relatively laughable and I spent more time either trying to figure out how the camera crew made the doors open and the footprints appear in the talcum powder. Katie also has a moment whereby she gets dragged out of her room while asleep by her foot, which it has to be said, was very funny. As the hauntings get more severe Katie gets “bitten” on her back showing a rather feral jaw mark on her back and she starts acting bizarrely and spends an entire evening standing over the bed staring at her sleeping boyfriend. Oooh scary.

The boyfriend acts like an even bigger douche, and we’re talking douche of Gary Neville proportions, when he decides to bring a Ouija board into the house. Now even if this is real, the medium they brought in told them not to communicate with the spirit/demon. This promptly bursts into flames and scoots around the table like a magnetic football player.

As the hauntings increase and Katie starts showing rather tenuous signs of being possessed, the film climaxes with the infra-red camera filming her go downstairs, scream for Micah, and then he flies towards the camera dead and she walks towards the camera looking all glazed over with a freaky face for one final boo scare. Now personally that was very very funny and the text which follows which tries to imply a sequel, frankly creates a lame ending to a lame film.

Verdict

Personally speaking Paranormal Activity was totally bollocks, but it certainly didn’t live up to the hype and chocked full of boo scares and DIY horror effects, similar to the pranks you pull on a younger cousin when you’re about ten years old. The storyline was iffy and the over-reaction to nonsensical events as well as the irritating acting wasn’t enough to convince me to be remotely scared or even on edge for that matter. It’s just a voyeuristic snorefest which mainly entails watching two people sleep for the majority of the film while a door opens on it’s own. Compared to such crap as The Rite, Insidious or Drag Me To Hell, it doesn’t seem that bad, but if you asked to watch it again, it’d tell you to take a very long walk as I probably slept through more of the film than the protagonists did.