Its a Blair Witch, documentary-style, low-budget horror film about a woman is who being haunted and her live in boyfriend who decides to film their home in order for find an explanation for the weird sounds and occurrences.
Its in limited release right now but Paramount has been running a campaign to build the excitement and its expected to go into wide release soon. My neighbors and I went tonight and sat in a very large and sold-out theater.
Its really amazing how terrifying a swinging door and some footstep noises can be. About halfway through the movie a couple at the back of the theater got up and stormed out saying that they were done. As the movie went on, more and more people got up and left out of fear. The ending is a shocker and I have NEVER seen so many people rush for the door after a movie ended.
As I type this, I am camped out on the neighbors' couch and will probably be sleeping here instead of going back to my own apartment alone. Mind you, I have a very overactive imagination but seriously...scariest movie I've seen in awhile.
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posted
I doubt they left in fear. If it is anything like the Blair Witch, it was a combination of nausea and boredom.
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posted
Except that they left after a particularly scary moment rather than one of the slower scenes. Another couple who left was sitting right in front of us and the girl spent the whole movie freaking out. The movie has its funny moments and the final two seconds were very Hollywood, but there are no mucus filled shots up anyone's noses. The shaky camera syndrome is pretty much gone after about five minutes since the most terrifying scenes happen at night when the boyfriend has placed the camera on a tripod in the corner of the room while the pair sleeps.
Its certainly not a movie for everyone but for people who respond to less-is-more horror and have active imaginations, it will be more than satisfying. And for a documentary style horror movie, the acting and dialogue was incredibly believable.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I went to a midnight showing, got there an hour and a half early only to find out that the 12:00am was full and bought tickets to the 2:00am. Two seperate 2:00 theatres filled up with people who had waited a very long time, and no one was scoffing or mouthing off about how the movie sucked, we were all very gripped by the show. Its regrettable that Blair Witch Project keeps on being mention in contrast to Paranormal Activity, they are alike in the fact that they are both shot first person by the characters who interact directly with the camera in odd and super-natural circumstances. But believe me that the likeness' stop there.
Watch the trailer for yourself, and consider the fact that over one million people have already demanded that this film be available in thier cities.
posted
According to an email I got it will be getting a national release now. Since there has been 1 million requests.
Apparently it is supposed to have gotten a lot of good reviews so I am excites to see it.
Here is the email I got.
quote: OVER ONE MILLION FANS DEMAND PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
Hit Film Gets Nationwide Expansion After Unprecedented Demands HOLLYWOOD, CA (October 10 , 2009) -- Following 2-weeks of nationwide midnight only sellouts and fan frenzy over the limited release hit thriller PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, moviegoers everywhere have been heard!
Over 1,000,000 people from around the country demanded the film play in their city by logging on to ParanormalMovie.com. In response, Paramount Pictures will release the film nationwide beginning Friday, October 16th.
Tickets for the movie will be on sale via ParanormalMovie.com by 5pm PST on Tuesday, October 13th. Those who have 'demanded it' will get the first alert when tickets go on sale.
"From the very beginning, we put this film in the hands of the fans and we trusted them to tell us where and when it should be seen. We couldn't be more thrilled by their overwhelming support and we are happy to release the film in every town - big and small," said Rob Moore, Vice Chairman of Paramount Pictures.
The movie Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called "an ingenious horror film. It's so well made it's truly scary" is currently garnering 90% on RottenTomatoes.com.
To find show times and to buy tickets in your area, visit ParanormalMovie.com
Follow PARANORMAL ACTIVITY on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/TweetYourScream, where you can find reactions from these screenings and other news about the film. Fans can also post their reactions at Facebook.com/ParanormalActivity.
posted
Gotta admire the faith the makers of the film had, leaving it up to the people to prove the worth of thier work to Paramount.
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: Gotta admire the faith the makers of the film had, leaving it up to the people to prove the worth of thier work to Paramount.
I'm reasonably sure there was a plan B.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I saw the movie tonight, and was hugely disappointed by it. to quote from my post about it over on sake,
quote:I wasn't frightened by it. It did make me feel a little nauseous, but that was from the camera work. I didn't buy one of the character's motivations, the exposition dump at the beginning of the film was tedious, and the plot unfolded in a pretty predictable way. There was one moment that I found genuinely creepy, but that was it. I thought that the ending could have been made much, much more effective very easily, but it wasn't.
I wouldn't recommend seeing it, personally, but if you are going to see it you should probably do so in the theater. I think that it would lose quite a bit were in not viewed as part of a large audience.
posted
My friends and I actually discussed how it might be scarier in an apartment/house. The audience reactions always take me out of the film and the similar setting would make things interesting.
I agree that the ending could have been better. The two previous endings were much less Hollywood and more realistic.
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...Because I just saw Paranormal Activity at the local second-run theater last night, and I had a few thoughts.
I wasn't exactly impressed. Well, that's not fair. I was very impressed that someone made a competent horror movie with a very limited budget, set, and cast (and, presumably, crew.) There were certainly moments when I mused about how a particular effect was done, and how I would go about doing the same on a shoestring budget, but that such musing was occurring may say something about my degree of immersion.
I'm not exactly a fan of sudden loud noises, so I gently covered my ears whenever the lights went out (I could still hear dialogue and so forth.) In doing so, I seem to have innoculated myself against about 95% of the shocks PA had to offer.
Now, The Blair Witch Project gets a lot of flack. I must confess I think a fair amount of said flack comes from it having had the temerity to become popular; having done so, it becomes uncool to admit to liking it, or at least to having been scared by it. Here I must confess I felt a real sense of dread even after TBWP that PA never really began to approach.
It seems like nearly every critic feels obligated to compare the two for obvious reasons: indie low-budget horror movies, allegeging to be records of real events, shot with a small number of cameras apparently wielded by the characters themselves. But there's at least as much to differentiate the two as to compare them.
The audience doesn't really get to know the characters in TBWP very well. And, surprisingly, this may be a good thing. By reducing them to raw emotional responses, it's easier to identify with them. The characters in PA are introduced with a fair amount of exposition, and it may actually be a weakness. Though it does make for some good humorous moments in dialogue between the two mains, by the end the male character has sunk into a horror cliche: He's the macho idiot who does nearly every damn thing wrong he could possibly have done. Even his macho stubbornness evaporates at the one moment it might actually have conceivably done him some good.
I mused, coming out, that some kinds of horror have something in common with some kinds of comedy. In well-crafted versions of either, the crafters keep the audience right next to them in their pacing, feeding them information that will pay off later. If you assume the audience is stupid- you keep feeding them the same information over and over to make sure they get it, you foreshadow what's going to happen so obviously that there's never any doubt- it often doesn't work. Likewise if you get to the climax of your scene/movie/joke having left your audience in the dust- instead of shock, a laugh, a fright, you get a puzzled "Huh?" or a "But that doesn't make any sense." (See TBWP2. Or, rather, don't.) Our primate brains like to be rewarded for remembering what is relevant- when something earlier we might have been almost expecting comes to fruition, the laugh or the fright increases substantially. To torture another metaphor, it's sort of like riding a sled down a hill towards a jump. "Okay, we're moving... Oh, I see where this is going- Oh!"
some SPOILERS, of necessity, follow.
-SPOILERS BEGIN-
The most chilling part of Blair Witch for me was one of the final shots. We see one of the remaining surviving crew standing in the corner of a room in the ruined house- the first structure we've seen for a long section of the movie- and hear a woman's screaming. And we probably recall, from very early in the movie, an account of the Witch killing a child while she made another stand in the corner waiting.
PA gives information that is both more vague and more obvious. We're pretty clear early on that what is troubling the female character is a demon. It's revealed rather late that a similar occurence happened elsewhere, possibly on account of the same demon; I'm still more than a little fuzzy on the details, but it sounded as though the victim was left catatonic, possibly following a botched exorcism. It's suggested that leaving the house wouldn't help the situation; we never find out whether this would be the case or not, and there are suggestions each way; what's clear is that staying in the house ultimately didn't help. It's made very clear that the demon is even more hostile towards the boyfriend than the female lead; that he fails to recognize this requires a staggering level of obliviousness. Many of the scares are actually diminished by having the characters observe them a second time on video, in slow motion, in daylight. It's almost like the creators didn't trust us to catch the visual effects.
There isn't a "standing in the corner while something terrible happens to one of the other characters off-camera" moment, where earlier information suddenly comes into horrifying focus. But there is enough information made available to us and the characters to frustrate us that the few actions the characters make to address their plight are either counter-productive or useless, and frequently, foolish. Some of their actions seem like they serve only to allow creepy things to happen, and awareness of this draws the audience out of the moment. Perhaps chief among this, to my mind, is their self-imposed isolation. Why not have a friend over to stay and help keep watch? Why not leave a light on in the hallway? Why wait for the one recommended "demonologist"- why not speak with local clergy?
Perhaps the biggest difference between BW and PA, and the biggest reason for my preference, is the situation of the characters. Both groups are the victims of supernatural forces, but the film crew of TBWP largely just set out and are completely unprepared and helpless in the face of what they encounter. There's little suggestion that, having recognized the danger, they could have escaped it. The main characters of PA are given everything they need to at a minimum be aware that what they're dealing with is dangerous. In response, they isolate themselves, seek help too late, seek help from too limited a range of sources, and worsen their own situation (far more than one character in TBWP discarding the group's map in frustration- he believes it to be useless, but there seems to be reason to believe he's correct on that account.) At a certain point, perhaps PA simply didn't manage to maintain a level of intensity to sustain my suspension of disbelief- I quickly went from accepting the characters' isolation as brought about by their circumstances or personalities to suspecting it as a limitation of set, casting, and budget.
-END SPOILERS-
It's still not a bad movie. It does manage to be creepy at points, and they really did quite well with limited resources. But Blair Witch is the one that made me want to sleep with the lights on, shaky camera and all.
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quote:Originally posted by Sterling: Now, The Blair Witch Project gets a lot of flack. I must confess I think a fair amount of said flack comes from it having had the temerity to become popular; having done so, it becomes uncool to admit to liking it, or at least to having been scared by it. Here I must confess I felt a real sense of dread even after TBWP that PA never really began to approach.
I have another theory about why BWP is so disliked: The movie is really not a whole lot of individually scary elements; it's basically one long setup to a frightening ending. And if you happen to be a person on whom the scary ending doesn't work, well then you've just wasted two hours. But if it does work, then it knocks you on your @$$.
I rarely find movies scary (mostly because horror films rarely acknowledge a difference between frightening and startling, or between frightening and gory), so when I watched BWP, I dared it to scare me. And it knocked me on my @$$. I was frightened for three days afterwards. The next two nights, I could not sleep until the sun came up.
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Blayne Bradley
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Movie Bob points out that the movie is good because of using a tripod as a significant contributor.
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quote:Originally posted by Sean Monahan: it's basically one long setup to a frightening ending. And if you happen to be a person on whom the scary ending doesn't work, well then you've just wasted two hours. But if it does work, then it knocks you on your @$$.
I rarely find movies scary (mostly because horror films rarely acknowledge a difference between frightening and startling, or between frightening and gory), so when I watched BWP, I dared it to scare me. And it knocked me on my @$$.
Good point. If the ending doesn't work for you (on you?), TBWP is certainly going to be a dud.
Conversely, I think I "dared" Paranormal Activity to scare me, and I think I was more nervous because of its reputation for being oh so scary than I actually was by anything in the movie itself.
Blair Witch also, I think, benefits from leaving most of the violence to the viewer's imagination, which is capable of coming up with far worse than the best SFX team. PA essentially spells out the fate of its characters in black and white, to which the viewer can then say, "Ah, well. Yeah. Kind've saw that coming."
It's certainly true that PA doesn't suffer from nearly as much shaky camera work as TBWP (or as I once heard it called, the "Shake The Camera and B**** Project") but again, that's somewhat of an "eye of the beholder" matter; unless the camera work actually gives you a headache, confusion, to a degree, can be far more useful in creating a sense of horror than clarity, which often leaves the viewer feeling in control of the experience.
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