“Paranormal Activity” showcases terror in a whole new way

"Paranormal Activity" begins innocuously and then slowly turns sinister. It's told from the perspective of a loving young California couple's video camera, which initially documents a happy existence lightly tinged by idiosyncratic household activity. They hear bumps, voices and footsteps, but no one's ever there. The recorder is left on at night to document the strangeness, which ratchets up in intensity as the month progresses.  A door shifting on its own is no big deal, but what about the footsteps, the screaming and the out-of-body experiences?

"Paranormal Activity" tells the story of a woman's haunting by a demon so convincingly that I heard several groups in the theater discussing whether or not they just watched real footage. It's fiction, but low-key and subtle compared to virtually any other horror film mainstream audiences are accustomed to.

This film's entire plot would surely be the opening 10 minutes of most horror scripts, but this one's interested in the process of possession and the effect it has on a picturesque American couple's relationship. The film asks, what would you do if your significant other was pursued by a demon?

The couple, Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat (the actors' real names are used) are convincingly portrayed as ordinary and pleasant, perhaps not marriage material but living as if they were, anyway. The opening scenes are subtly masterful in that they don't demand a suspension of disbelief. I suspect this has contributed significantly to the terror reported by so many. More colorful or distinct characters might distance many audience members from the frightening occurrences, but everyman (and woman) extends the terror's reach.

The camera captures their days and nights, which escalate from curiosity to discomfort before becoming dread.

There's potential to read this as a metaphor, their otherworldly troubles substituting for the romantic discord that seems to ultimately shred every relationship we'll have.

They even hire a ghost expert, or a counselor, if that's how you'd like to look at it, whose ineffectual contribution to their plight serves to put the problem into words but fails to aid or solve it. Our demons are our own to solve, this suggests, in more ways than one.

The film's ending left me uncertain. Without giving it away, it's debatable whether the close ingeniously plays off horror norms or childishly succumbs to them. Either way, as we're told in the opening captions, we knew that it wouldn't be pretty for Katie and Micah.
 
3 out of 5

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James can be read online at www.jamesfrazier.biz.