Welcome to my first review on Blogspot! Today I am going to be reviewing Paranormal Activity, the basic idea of the film is a young couple are experiencing strange events in their house. So the man of the house buys a video camera and some sound equipment in the hopes of getting these strange events on tape. What you watch is the tape that was in the camera. Think Cloverfield and Blair Witch Project and you get the jist.
Hopefully you watched the trailer in my first blog so you all know what film I am talking about. I like the trailer, it's kinda cheesy with having the cameras in the cinema and showing people's reactions. It serves it's purpose though because if you see people screaming and stuff in the cinema then it makes you want to watch it. I first heared of this film in a news report on TV, I found out that it was yet another film that had the power of the internet to generate a buzz. Snakes on a Plane and Cloverfield are two other examples of how the internet buzz got these films talked about.So after a very positive review from a friend of mine I decided to give it a watch. I knew I would already like the style of the film because unlike many people I enjoyed Blair Witch Project. The main critisim of that film was "You didn't see anything" but as many people know it's what you don't see that scares you. Everyone knows that when you are forced to use your imagination you think up the worst everytime. Reservior Dogs with the cutting of the ear is one scene that gets mentioned time after time. The shower scene in Psycho, people were shocked by the brutailty of that scene when it was first released. Even though that knife is nowhere near the woman's body, the audence's minds just pieced that part in.
I digress, where was I? Oh yes, so I decided to give it a watch and I liked it. I wouldn't say it's the scariest thing I've ever seen, but it kept me entertained for an hour and fourty. I must also mention that the version I saw was the original cut of the movie. From what I have read there are 2 versions of this movie and the main differences is the endings. I won't say what each ending is because it will give it all away. I will see the other version as soon as I can so I can compare the two versions. As I said before I liked the film but obviously there was a few problems with the film but on the whole I enjoyed it. There was one scene in the film where the man of the house (Mika) is reading a book in bed and he is talking about what he's reading. Then the camera changes to some shots of the different pages but his speach continues, it threw me off a little because this is meant to be a home video style film so it shouldn't have been edited that way. There was also a scene where the make-up was a little unconvincing but there was some good things in that scene that made up for it.
I don't think I could watch this film over and over but it definatley will be one I will watch from time to time. All in all it was a well made film that should keep a lot of people entertained from start to finish. My question now is what's next for the handheld camera genre that seems to be making it's mark in the film industry? In my opinion this genre works best with horror because if done properly it will make you believe that the video is real.
Thank you for reading and all comments are welcome.
