Paranormal activity2/21/2023 ![]() ![]() Perhaps Paranormal Activity can be read as a parable of marriage, and the impossibility of knowing another person – the ghost of their past will always return in the most intimate of relationships. How has it never been done before? Well, part of Peli's skill is making it look easy, and he has elicited tremendously believable and relaxed performances from Featherstone and Sloat. Writer-director Oren Peli has hit on such a simple idea, and such a low-cost way of making it work. But when this same man is called back in the film's final sequence, and backs nervously out of the apartment, horrified at what he can sense in the air – and that he personally is in danger – the effect is brilliantly upsetting, like a sort of nausea. Of course, filming does not put Micah in control: rather the reverse.Ī matter-of-fact psychic expert, played with downbeat conviction by Mark Fredrichs, like a doctor making a housecall, calms their nerves for a while. As their lives unravel in this nightmare, we learn that Katie experienced visions as a child, and that whatever is happening has nothing to do with the house and everything to do with her personally.įrightened and angry, Micah resents that she told him nothing of this before they moved in together, and despite her pleas for him to stop, he redoubles his determination to confront the ghostly invader on camera: filming is his way of staying in control of the situation and perhaps even his way of punishing Katie. ![]() Having allowed us to watch these bedroom scenes directly, the film superimposes a second layer of anxiety by having Micah and Katie watch them later on the laptop screen, flinching and gasping just as we have done. It creates something uncanny, a kind of spiritual shivering or trembling, imprinted on the video. The "fast-forward" effect accelerates the thousands of barely-perceptible movements we make when standing still, and so Katie's form wobbles and jerks. Then the timecode speeds up, showing that she has eerily remained in that position for about an hour: sleepwalking or rather sleep-standing. Most disquietingly, we watch Katie one night get up, turn, and standīy the bed, facing the sleeping Micah – asleep. And then … very creepy things happen, subtly at first, and then not so subtly. Like film of a badger's sett in some natural-history programme, we watch night-time footage of the sleeping couple with the timecode ticking over in the bottom right-hand corner. Micah tells Katie that he intends to film their daily lives as much as possible, and more importantly, he is going to set up the camera in a corner of their bedroom, with high-quality recording equipment, in an attempt to get evidence of the nightly paranormal activity that Katie has begun to suspect. ![]() To her bemusement, Micah is filming her, and not with any old camcorder he has bought a big professional-quality digital movie camera, complete with the fixed spotlight which in restricted light creates a harsh light-halo in the middle of the frame – the halo that in Blair Witch, back in 1999, picked out the dense foliage with disorientating clarity and also the glistening mucus and tears on Heather's gibbering face. As the movie begins, we see what Micah sees: his girlfriend driving up to their apartment in a cool convertible – the first and last time we will see the normal world outside their home. Newcomers Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat give subtly authentic performances as Katie and her rugged boyfriend Micah, living together in a pleasant apartment – the film's single location. Moreover, it elegantly solves a problem that always threatened to sink both of those films, particularly Cloverfield: how is it that the camera-person so often manages to keep the scary thing more or less in shot? Wouldn't they just drop the camera and run? ![]()
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