Film does not register on EMF

It seems like every time a film produced with low quality camera work makes it to theaters, public relations buzz jumps up to extol the film’s ingenuity and creativity. It happened with “The Blair Witch Project,” more deservedly with “Cloverfield” and most recently with this month’s release of “Paranormal Activity.” Sadly, watching “Paranormal Activity” is about as exciting as sitting through a live action feed of C-SPAN.

The movie opens with couple Katie and Micah (pronounced Mee-kah) and Micah’s new camera, which he plans to use to discover the strange occurrences and sounds they have been hearing inside the house. As it turns out, Katie has been haunted since the age of 8, even surviving a house fire 15 years earlier; a fire of mysterious and unknown origin.

The couple’s byplay is both annoying and mind numbing. Micah thinks she’s the cutest girl ever, and he’s the best boyfriend excepting his strange fascination with electronics. As the movie progresses, so does the pain of witnessing their interaction. She’s terrified and he isn’t taking it seriously enough. Tension mounts when Micah denounces her for failing to mention her demon stalker before moving in together. Watching the two together is almost as bad as Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn in “The Breakup.”

Katie calls in a psychic to help with her dilemma. Of course he’s unable to help. He refers the pair to a demonologist. Enter more bickering. Katie wants to call, Micah wants to solve the mystery himself. After all, it’s his house and his girlfriend being threatened.

Predictably, the movie’s major events take place at night. The predominant tactic used throughout the film is a simple time ticker placed in the lower right corner of the screen, which is sped up until viewers see whatever spooky event is due to take place while the happy couple sleeps. It was an interesting technique the first time, but by the 18th night it’s not only stale, but a struggle to muster enough energy to watch for whatever happens on screen.

In the end, it amounts to watching an hour’s worth of their bedroom door slamming over and over and over again, with minor variations. By the second half of the film, the theater was filled with the sound of boisterous yawning, and all of the other 10 people in the theatre with me gave up all pretense of movie-going etiquette and started to talk among themselves. I can’t say I blame them.

I wanted to say something redeeming about this film, so I’ll just say that if you manage to make it through the soporific first hour, the last few minutes of the film are pretty scary. Just don’t expect it to make up for the time you wasted waiting to get there.

I’m normally a fan of most independent films, especially low-budget horror, but “Paranormal Activity” doesn’t offer anything new, fresh or even interesting. By the time the film ended I was aching for spinning heads or at least some projectile pea soup. Next time Oren Peli should leave the demon possession stories to the likes of William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin. At least “The Exorcist” was funny.