Paranormal Activity Review

The opening text of Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity informs us that Paramount would like to thank the families of Micah and Katie, as well as the San Diego Police Department, for their co-operation and support with the film. This message has two essential functions: it tells us that the film's two principal characters are doomed from the start; and it invites us to play a game of 'let's pretend' concerning the film's authenticity, as though all the faux home video footage that follows (in fact mostly shot over one week in Peli's own home) really was 'found' evidence in a bizarre domestic tragedy.

This is a trick familiar from The Blair Witch Project (1999), and as it happens Peli's film was similarly made by unknowns on a microbudget - although whether that was $11,000, $14,000 or $15,000 will depend on who you ask. Of course, none of these estimates seems to include the cost of the entirely re-recorded soundtrack, or indeed of the different, newly shot ending (based on a suggestion from the not so unknown Steven Spielberg) that has replaced the less sensational dénouement found in the version of the film that was doing the festival rounds in 2007. Indeed, there are at least three (some say nine) different endings that have been shot for the film.

The many mythologies surrounding Paranormal Activity have been embraced, exploited and at least in part engineered by Paramount in a US campaign where clever viral marketing and staggered releases raised viewer expectations to fever pitch. The result has been a runaway hit, making $9.1 million in its first week of release despite opening in fewer than 200 cinemas, easily beating horror rival Saw VI (and everything else) to the top of the American box office in the week of Halloween, and grossing the most profit ever for a film within its budget range. The film itself has become as much of an unstoppable phenomenon as what it purports to document.

All of which is of course just hype - but as it happens, to a large degree Paranormal Activity lives up to its legend, simply because, for all its status as a derivative, subtext-free ghost train ride through all manner of cheap 'gotcha!' moments, it is that rare thing, a horror film that genuinely frightens and unnerves. Watch it in a theatre audience, and you will bear witness to the full symptomology of dread and discomfort all around (and within) you - the fidgeting, the clenching of fists, the nervous laughter, the rapid intakes of breath, muted (or not so muted) cries of 'Don't do that!'/'Don't go there!' and the spectacle of an entire audience jumping in unison from their seats in fright.