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Don't waste your time.
Oh, I'm sorry, I guess I should write a full-length review. That's what they pay me the big bucks for, after all.
Surely by now you've seen the trailers. This is the scary, scary movie that shows you what happens while you sleep.
My question is, why don't these people ever wake up? I know not everyone sleeps as lightly as I do, but I'm pretty sure that if freaky things had been happening at night, I'd be waking up every time the house creaked, and especially every time my significant other got out of bed, or the blankets started mysteriously moving.
Filmed with a reported budget of $11k, made to look like a home movie, Paranormal Activity tells the story of young "engaged to be engaged" couple Micah and Katie. They've recently moved in together, and Micah is upset to learn that throughout her life, Katie has had strange visitations at night. These loud noises and weird occurrences are messing with his precious sleep, and he's determined to figure it out.
All by himself.
Every attempt that Katie makes to bring in an expert to deal with the ghost, demon, or whatever, is met with scoffing from Micah. He's a MAN! He'll fix it himself! By reading a cheap Dover book and video taping everything and shouting "I'll take care of this!" while clearly having no freakin' clue.
Unfortunately, I found myself bored by this movie. The daytime scenes of the couple bickering, trying to get on with their life, and occasionally discussing what happened the night before totally detract from any tension that the nighttime scenes may have built. Also, the escalation of scariness is just too slow. It starts out with events so minor that they made me say "Really, that's it?" and by the time things that could have been genuinely scary happened, I was so removed from the film that I didn't care.
Paranormal Activity tries to dodge the usual "Why don't they just leave?" haunted house bullet by having the problem be specific to Katie instead of the house. But then it makes its own special bullet: "Why doesn't Katie just say 'I don't care what you think, I'm calling the exorcist and taking care of this now.'?"
I think that in just the right setting, this movie could be scary. I could see myself being scared if I watched the movie at night, by myself, while my husband was out of town, and there was a wind storm outside, so the house kept making weird noises. But in a half-empty theater, with my husband and our friends in the middle of a warm Arizona autumn day, it was simply a boring movie whose low budget showed every time it tried to be scary.
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