I say that I recently got round to watching it but it was almost a month a go now, I just hadn't particularly felt like writing about it just yet.
I had been looking forward to watching Paranormal Activity pretty much since I heard about it coming out after expecting it to make me terrified of setting foot in my house alone ever again. I say 'terrified' but what I mean is 'more terrified'.
The house I live in is, quite frankly, pretty creepy. It's not one of those houses that looks particularly scary, but it is one of those old houses that just makes random noises when you're the only person in. Things fall of other things and make loud noises and it usually happens when no one else is around.
I think the first time I remember something particularly scary was one time when Ricky was round. We were alone in the house playing Nintendo or something upstairs. Then we hear someone/something say, "Get Out" really loudly from downstairs. We started panicking and ended up running out wielding a lamp and a magazine as weapons. Thinking back, it sounds kind of stupid, but it still scared the bloody shit out of us.
So, back to my original point; the thing that annoyed me about Paranormal Activity was how slow it was. Like barely anything happened throughout the whole film. On Rotten Tomatoes, it is described as "90 minutes of relentless suspense". Yeah, if by "suspense", you mean waiting for literally anything to happen. I think up until the last five minutes or so, there were a series of shitty events like a big bang and stuff like that, but the rest was walking round and talking. Yawns.
From the way everyone described it, I was expecting to be on the edge of my seat throughout. All in all, it was a pretty fucking wanky film. I suppose there were maybe four redeeming factors, only two of which I actually cared about.
The first, and the one I don't care about, is how it was filmed. It was filmed in the style of a home made documentary, which could possibly be part of why it was fairly slow. Take away the painfully bad acting by the demonologist bloke, and it's all fairly convincing (except for the ending). Everything seems natural and the characters are really quite believable.
The second thing was the lead female, Katie's fluctuating weight. I think the film was supposed to be based over 18 nights or something, and her weight is yo-yoing at a ridiculous pace. At the start she looks normal, then after the first weird thing, she becomes suddenly really fat, then she got skinny but with really big boobs. Oh, and then she got fat again, and then she got regular. Just keep a consistent diet during film making! It was a great source of humour though.
The third thing was the character, Micah. He was such a banter king. He did whatever he wanted and was just a general bad ass. He did stuff that his girlfriend told him not to, multiple times. He mocked the demon. He went up into the attic despite the fact that I wouldn't have done that in a million years. He was just living and loving. When she killed him at the end, it was a little bit heartbreaking.
Oh, I probably should have warned you about that little spoiler.
I know I haven't specifically labelled the fourth point, but it leads directly on to what I wanted to say about irrational fears. The one thing in the film that genuinely scared me a little bit was when she was in bed and then her leg gets pulled out by nothing and she is dragged out of the room. After seeing that, I found myself making 100% sure my legs and feet were definitely tucked under my covers. That is actually fucking terrifying.
But then again, if you don't learn to sleep with your door closed, you've got to be ready to be dragged out of bed and into the landing.
Learn your bloody lesson, you idiots!
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