Paranormal Activity is Oren Peli‘s first movie, starring Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat.
Plot:
Katie (Katie Featherston) and Micah (Micah Sloat) just moved into a new house and are unsettled by some weird noises they hear. So Micah buys a camera to document what’s going on and maybe getting a proof for the supernatural nature of these noises. But soon things take a turn for the worse – and there really seems to be a demonic presence haunting them.
Paranormal Activity was hyped a lot, so I decided to watch it even though I’m not a huge fan of these fake documentaries, nor of ghost stories. That said, I liked it better than I thought I would, though I still had some problems with it.
Peli doesn’t manage to maintain the tension all the way through the movie and there are some scenes one could have done without, but mostly the fear level is pretty high and has a few upward spikes where it gets genuinely scary, even when you know exactly how some special effects were done.
The camerawork was very well done – though there were a lot of handheld scenes, it never got nauseating and there were always enough stationary shots inbetween to make up for it.
Unfortunately, the movie starts to fall apart when you start thinking about it. Very little of it actually makes sense, from them not turning on lights to not calling the demonologist to character motivation or back story. You don’t really notice while you’re watching – which I guess is to the credit of Peli – but afterwards… well.
The actor’s performances were mixed. In some scenes, they were quite brilliant – especially Katie Featherston. In others [and I’m thinking it was the more scripted ones] they just lost me. But this might also have to do with the fact that their motivations just became more and more unclear and unrealistic.
Summarising: Very watchable, though not all it cracked up to be.
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On a sidenote: I just drifted off into the imdb forums about this film (as usual, a bad mistake) but there’s seriously a debate going on about how fat Katie is? Seriously? Do people not know anymore how “normal” women look like? [By normal I mean women who don’t make their money by looking skinny for a camera/an audience.]
I mean, Katie is not particularly skinny, but she’s not overweight – it’s more that the average actress is underweight.
kalafudra's Stuff 
I thought it was really boring and never even finished watching it- although that’s possibly because I was drunk. But mostly, I remember staring at the screen and just wishing _something_ would happen. Plus I HATE hand-held cam.
I don’t like hand-held cam either, but I thought that it was not that jarring here but rather well-done, since it was necessary for the story-framework.
And there were some lenghts, but mostly I thought it worked fine.