Paranormal Activity. Two claws up!

[BellaRisa]

The more people who say it's not scary, the more I feel lame for being as scared as I was. The funny part is I was MORE scared later, when I went home alone...in bed...and was staring at the door...

Hon, the 6th Sense scared the living crap out of me, and a whole bunch of people said it was boring (wtf); one friend actually said he fell asleep on it. Same with A Nightmare On Elm Street. Don't let a minority of "too cool to be scared" folks mess with your head 😉

 

[BellaRisa]

How was it not predictable?

It started with a minor door creek and escalated to more.
You knew every night something would happen and the bass would reverb when something was about to happen

I said above i believe, i nearly fell down laughing at the footprint scene
Also, one would think as things got more "Serious" the BF would forget the camera to rush and find out whats happening

No, the bass did *not* reverb every time something was going to happen, which is one of the points I found refreshing. The eerie silence was part of what made it so creepy. And I'm sorry but other than the baby powder scene that movie was not predictable in my opinion. Nothing happened on several nights, most people expected the professor to come in and do some big 'thing' to help and for something else to be up in the attic....and since when is a chick staring at a guy sleeping for hours a common occurence in horror films? (that part really messed with me by the way). No offense, but I think you watched this movie expecting it to suck for you, and that's what you got 🙂 (Didn't you say you didn't even see it in the theater?)

 

[Marquis De Sade]

No, the bass did *not* reverb every time something was going to happen, which is one of the points I found refreshing. The eerie silence was part of what made it so creepy. And I'm sorry but other than the baby powder scene that movie was not predictable in my opinion. Nothing happened on several nights, most people expected the professor to come in and do some big 'thing' to help and for something else to be up in the attic....and since when is a chick staring at a guy sleeping for hours a common occurence in horror films? (that part really messed with me by the way). No offense, but I think you watched this movie expecting it to suck for you, and that's what you got 🙂 (Didn't you say you didn't even see it in the theater?)

Hmm. I watched it at home. I wonder if that would've made a difference. I watched the original Pulse at home and parts were still unsettling but because the studios turned this into an event movie, I wonder if the experience would've changed my perception of it. Would you watch it again home when it comes out and lemme know?

 

[chicago]

I think we can all have differing opinions without being "too cool to be scared," or whatever.

I didn't find it scary, and I'm a pretty jumpy person in general. In fact, I found it a waste of the 10 bucks I paid to see it. But if other people liked it, awesome.

 

[Dussicar]

The rest of the folks are the ones who know lazy screen writing and great William Castle-style exploitation when they see it. There was so much talking because they had to plug in the plot holes that they knew people were going to bring up, but didn't want to actually show anythingunfold. Was the ghosthunter named Basil Exposition?

Look! The ouiji board caught on fire and we didn't see anyone light a match! Wow!

Look - footprints just appeared, out of nowhere, just like in the cartoons when a character puts on "vanishing cream"! Amazing!

Hey - things are so scary that the expert is scared! That means I should be scared!

And that boyfriend - he has balls! He's going to show that demon who is boss! Not in over his head at all. Go for it, rush in and get the burned up photo after you've been warned that you're fighting a demon and your girlfriend told you she has been followed by this thing for her entire life and the expert told you NOT to talk to it with a ouiji board but you did anyway. It's like he's trying to prove something, but we just don't know exactly what. But that's one dedicated day trader - he must know what he is doing!

Was there no other paranormal 'expert' in the San Diego phone book they could consult with? Did they not think that maybe a news station or magazine might want to document this? Since it IS movie reality - couldn't they have called the Ghostbusters? So the demon was following her..... could they have not moved out of the demon-epicenter house into a place with less receptive energy for demons since things ahd never been that bad before, even though she has alway been followed by this? In real estate is it always location, location, location, after all. They taught us that in the first Ghostbusters. The building was a magnet for that iron-filing of a main character. How about, like, maybe, the iron-filing moving the to a less powerful magnent?

NOW you want to leave? Now? What in all of this weird crap goings-on made you think that you really had a handle on things up to this point, this specific moment in time, Ting-Tings? Why did it take the demon 25 years to stalk this woman; was his aim just that bad? Where was he the years he wasn't bugging her, outsourced to India?

I don't think it was a demon; I think Robert Zmeckis was just messing with them. Or it was an episode of Scare Tactics that went really wrong.

My audience was pretty much nonplussed. Fun movie, but... scariest thing ever? Sunshine Cleaning is looking better to me now.

*sigh*

This is why I don't watch shitty movies like this.

I have never watched "The Blair Witch Project." I saw a bit of it for free and still wanted my money back.

If, for some reason, I decide to ever do LSD again, I'll probably rent that movie, Cloverfield, and this over-hyped piece of shit.

It will still end up with me punching my friend in the nose because he let me rent movies that sucked to begin with because I was too incredibly retarded to take responsibility for my own actions.

Amerika! Fuk, yea!

 

[Slytickler]

What is scary to one person is not to another. Your mindset has a big impact on watching a movie as well as your surroundings. Anything that distracts me from a movie can take away my enjoyment. I have been in movies where some stupid person checks their cell phone a dozen times or more because they are too bored to be there but too stupid to leave. But perhaps the most angering is talking or worse laughing when the persons go to see a movie and it is not a horror movie that they expected. In the beginning of the Grudge someone was laughing so loud that i heard them 20 rows in front of them.

As I said before I loved the movie. Did I find it to be the most scary movie...no but I love movies that give me chills like this one rather than quarts of blood.

 

[Oddjob0226]

But for those of us who aren't investigators (so we don‘t know anything about that), and almost never watch the common, modern horror movies, and just want to see an interesting movie, this thing was silly. A GOOD kind of silly, but now that it's being blown up into some kinda new classic, it is automatically having my dissin’ stacked upon it which happens when anything decent gets overhyped beyond what it deserves; that’s just my biological bend. You know - “I’m fine with God, it’s the Christians I can’t stand.” Look at it as my birth defect. You guys don’t make fun of people in wheelchairs, do you? To me, Paranormal Activity is about one People’s Choice Award away from joining Superbad and The Princess Bride on my “way too much fandom” scorn pile. A cure is around the corner - please donate generously.

The movie was formulaic (cinema verite fictionalized. They took an hour and a half of Berlin Alexanderplatz and melded it with Rosemary’s Baby) and the characters were broad archetypes. A expert who gets frightened by what he discovers (where’s the scene where he finds something scary and says slowly, building up to a crescendo… Oh…. My … GOD!!! ? Leaving that scene out made for a more believable authority figure, and a film that breaks the mold? Shoo - the investigator should have worn a bowtie and drank out of a teacup he was such a broad cardboard cutout character). I'm sorry, you are really good with ghosts, but not demons? Silly me - I must have dialed the wrong number! Will I still be charged for this visit.... hey, where did he go? There's just a dust cloud and puddle of urine where he was standing.....? I guess he was in a hurry.

A male lead who is going to do things his way and no one can stop him - in a horror movie? Now how is THAT going to end, I wonder? Going in to the attic to follow the demon - what a brain this guy has…. Didn’t even bring a butterfly net! - Micha was even guilty of the tried and true “Let’s split up in the dark and find the killer” move. They just tried real, real hard not to make it look like that. And yes, it was a good try.

Honestly, I was hoping for a happy ending (knowing it wouldn’t happen) just so the movie would give me something unexpected from the Blair Witch/Cloverfield/Incident at Loch Ness/Open Water/Quarantine/The Fourth Kind genre. Heck, throw in Gimmie Shelter and Grey Gardens. Same styles, same stuff delivered to the viewers - more or less - from different genres, same downbeat endings.

The movie is getting recognition party because it was a decent movie made for $11,000. That kind of thing gets noticed; this ain‘t “Gitchy The Clown“. Although I'm still puzzled about the buzz from El Mariachi.

And it is noticed partly because otherwise normal people have been pasting up their Miracles Happen bumper stickers and seeing angels having tea in their backyards and treetops since the 1990s. After 911 scared people so much they are more than happy en mass to see good and evil as something controlled by powerful, invisible forces rather than actually trying to figure stuff out. So the movie catches the zeitgeist of the times, and makes a profit doing it. Total exploitation film making. Paranormal Activity is The Defilers, Fast Pussycat Kill Kill, and The Violent Years back from when people were worried about juvenile delinquency.

I liked Paranormal Activity. I did. I DID. But now? I’m waiting for this movie to cure AIDS or walk on water from how great it supposedly is.

Man Bites Dog, the unrated version. Now that’s some fictional cinema verite to see!

 

[grazer]

This was a cool movie. I strongly urge all horror fans to see it. First movie in a while that had actual suspense.

 

[Tiger.Lily]

Saw the movie last night. It was intense. I agree with everything Bella and alchemy said. But I do believe you have to have some sort of understanding of the paranormal and demons vs. ghosts to really appreciate and understand what's going on. And I think you have to at least believe in it all a little bit to be scared or creeped out. Fortunately for me, I do understand and I do believe -- so it scared the shit out of me. 🙂

 

[grazer]

I think it would had been scarier if more things happened during daytime. The whole "it only happens at night thing" is boring. Poltergeist nailed it when they had weird things happening during the "Safety" of daylight

I will say tho, the original ending was better than the flying remake

Agreed.

 

[grazer]

Saw it last night(downloaded) and i saw the theatre ending(the movie came out in 06 originally but a new ending was reshot)

Honestly, it bored me.

Some will say you need the theatre atmosphere for it, I was in a dark apt and had my 5.1 going

It bored me. Whenever the bass reverb hit up, you knew something was coming. I nearly laughed my ass off at the three toed footprints. Also, I felt the orig ending was better

I dunno, it was as i said weeks ago. Loud unusual noises, sudden movements that play on the camera's POV.

The original ending is way better. The theater ending was a bit too horror cliche for my tastes. I prefer it when a film leaves a little to the imagination.

 

[Miss Serendipity]

I finally got to see this today! I know "late to the party" I am not sure what I think of it just yet. I love horror movies but this movie creeped me out. In order for a movie to truly get to me, It has to have an effect on my psyche and be something that literally could of happened. It must be believable. This movie affected me somehow.

Its not the greatest movie IMO but I think its worth seeing. The ending I totally did not see coming but it was kind of predictable for these type of films.