Paranormal Activity

The weekend before Halloween, the "Hatch Batch" was in for a scare and decided to venture out to Columbia's Hollywood Theatre to see Paranormal Activity. In the weeks surrounding Paranormal Activity's release, there was much buzz about it. I had friends who saw it back home who claimed, "it was the scariest movie [they'd] seen in years." Everyone who saw it changed their Facebook status to reveal their immediate opinion of it, and most of the reviews claimed it had scared them.

The premise of it is basic. A young woman is haunted by some mysterious entity that her and her boyfriend are trying to document and get rid of, so that they may live in peace. The plot seems pretty stereotypical. It's not deep, or fancy. There's not much to figure out, no thinking to be done. Nothing out of the ordinary for your basic horror flick. So what makes this one so special? Why was this one scarier, or at the very least, what made this film so "buzz worthy"?

The main reason why this film was so talked about was the fact that it's budget was only $15,000, and they only used $11, 500. It is filmed entirely with a handheld camera, much like The Blair Witch Project, and there are hardly any special effects needed. For the nights when the couple films their bedroom while they are sleeping, the camera is placed on a tripod to record the night's events. Because the movie is filmed this way, it gives viewers the sense that this could really have happened. The couple seems believable and genuine, and it's almost as if we, the audience, are getting to peek into their lives as they go through this horrifying time in their life. The sense that something like this could really happen to anyone is one main element that made this movie as successful as it was.