Could the next sleeper film hit, be a short and very scary movie that some guy made in his own home?
Exactly 10 years ago, a film made in 1999 called, “The Blair Which Project” divided audiences every bit as much as it unsettled them. That film was made with an estimated budget of $1000.000 dollars and so far has grossed $141 million domestically!
“Paranormal Activity,” was written by first-time writer-director Oren Peli. A thriller story about a haunted-house, shot for $11,000 in a single week in his San Diego home made very much in the peekaboo-verite spirit of the “Blair Witch Project,” and in fact, is an even scarier film!
The main reason this movie is so scary is that it taps into one of our worsts primal fears, it being, “What happens when we go to sleep?”
What I can tell the few “Blair Witch Project” skeptics, is that in that movie, you never really did get to see very much, but in “Paranormal Activity” you do, you honestly do, though in a slow-built way that’s freaky and terrifying.
The entire film takes place in the two-story San Diego home of a young couple, Katie (Katie Featherston), who claims to be plagued by demons, and Micah (Micah Sloat), her obnoxious boyfriend, who decides to set up a video camera near their bed to record them while they sleep to get evidence that the spirits are real.
The night-vision is very creepy and as the movie continuous, becomes terrifying!
The two young lovers joke and bicker, but at night we see them asleep, the camera is at a fixed angle in their dankly lit bedroom. The shot keeps skipping ahead, hour by time-coded hour, until stuff starts to get really “spooky.”
With its, this-is-really-happening vibe, “Paranormal Activity,” scrapes away 30 years of encrusted nightmare cliches .
You can thank Steven Spielberg for the ending.
In 2008, DreamWorks (then being part of Paramount) picked up “ Activity,” intending to remake it as a star vehicle, but a triumphant test screening of Peli’s version rescued the movie.
Even Steven Spielberg loved the film, though he suggested a new ending. “It plays better than the original ending,” says Peli. Most people say it’s one of the scariest parts of the movie.”
The fear in this movie is real, because the fear is really…in all of us!
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