Any review of Paranormal Activity is almost redundant: to enjoy it to the maximum you should read very little about it (this review apart, of course), try to see it alone, ideally in the emptiest cinema you can find and preferably late at night. This is a fiendishly clever horror film that is a breath of fresh air for a genre that has of late seemed incapable of reinventing itself.
Writer/director Oren Peli has taken a favoured trick of the film-maker - the notion of the 'found' video footage - to craft the scariest American film in some time. It's been relentlessly compared to the Blair Witch Project, notably because of the paucity of the budget and the huge box office returns it has yielded in the United States.
It's a simple set-up: a young couple is persistently disturbed at night by strange noises and goings-on in their suburban house. She (Katie) believes that she is being followed by a demon. He (Micah) is initially sceptic but nonetheless buys a video camera to film their bedroom over a series of nights.
The results are hugely impressive, not to mention often very terrifying. There are two solid acting performances amidst plenty of things which go bump in the night. It's convincingly done and largely believable. Paranormal Activity sets a challenge for the current breed of fashionable horror directors: on a budget that would barely pay for breakfast on the set of a standard Hollywood horror, it shows up the tedious trend for torture porn and witless remakes. Let's hope it encourages more of the same sort of ingenious fare in the next few years.
Paul Hurley
