Paranormal Activity (2007)

A young couple, Micah and Kate, have just moved into a house and some demon ghost is following Kate around.

There's not much to say about this one. It's done in the "found footage" style of The Blair Witch Project and while some of the scenes are spooky it's overall not nearly as good as the movie it took its inspiration from.

There are two huge problems with this movie. The first is that the character of Micah is such a horrible person and does such stupid things that you can't relate to him at all. At one point Kate is on the verge of losing her mind and by this point has told Micah over and over to not bring a Ouija Board into the house so of course he brings one in and is like, "dude ouija board brah! Sweet!" because his character was written as this sort of dumbass fratboy day trader.

So the demon who is in love with Kate is a better person than this guy and even when Kate was being dragged to her doom across the hallway floor I was thinking, "well, it's better than being stuck with Micah." If you told that demon to not bring a Oujia Board into the house he would look into your eyes, say, "listen, if you feel so strongly about it then I promise I won't" and he would mean it. Then he would drag you screaming to your death.

The other problem is that there's nothing unique about the stuff that happens in the movie. What made The Blair Witch interesting and terrifying was all the weird unexplainable stuff- the little stick figures, the bloody bundle of teeth outside the tent- and also the fact that you could never be sure if the culprit was the actual Blair Witch, or some pyschos, or what.

Paranormal Activity, on the other hand, just takes all the ghost stuff you read about as a kid and throws them into a movie. Oujia Boards, stomping noises, slamming doors. They even throw in an exorcism bit near the end just to be sure they covered all the bases. And they show obviously paranormal stuff on camera and so you never wonder if, say, Kate is faking it or Micah is trying to drive her crazy. And it's got a stupid twist ending just to make things worse.

There are a couple of creepy scenes that are almost worth watching the whole thing for, but any time you could watch Paranormal Activity, is ninety minutes you could spend watching The Blair Witch which is better in every way.