Halloween 'Activity'

Ten years ago, “The Blair Witch Project” came out of nowhere to become a phenomenon – a low-budget, no-star indie movie that raked in massive box office dollars while keeping audiences on the edge of their seats in the theater and some sleeping with the lights on once they went home.

History’s repeating itself this year with “Paranormal Activity.”

More technologically sophisticated than “Blair Witch” and on a smaller scale than 2008’s brilliant “Cloverfield” (yes, I’m still going on about that), “Paranormal Activity” proves once again that to have a truly frightening movie, you don’t need buckets of blood and gore and mindless violence.

Shot in director Oren Peli’s house on an $11,000 budget, the film stars newcomers Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston as a couple named, conveniently, Micah and Katie, who are being haunted by, well, something. Micah decides to set up a camera in the house to try and capture the paranormal activity (oh, so that’s where the title came from…) on film.

Things start off slow and relatable, although the sense of foreboding and dread created by the text that appears at the beginning of the film lingers under the surface. Eventually, the audience starts to see and hear the things that have the couple concerned. In a world of over-the-top digital effects, these seemingly minor incidents – a door that moves on its own, an unexplained noise – are striking in their subtlety and believability.

Events continue to ratchet up as the entity in the house and the trouble its causing begin to take their toll on the couple.

There are times when, as an audience member, you’ll want to just scream at the couple to get out of the house, but, characters in horror movies never act as common sense would dictate. The film does a good job explaining why, and the story keeps you riveted enough that you’re not distracted by things that seem a little off (after all, they might be part of the story…).

Things build to a thrilling climax that left my heart thumping and my brain working. At first, I thought things were a little too simplistic, but the more I thought about it, the more I came up with interesting questions whose answers may or may not have been implied in the film.

I was a little frustrated by the rather one-sided nature of spiritual matters in the movie. Why can there be something potentially evil involved and yet no one even talks about God? There is a bit of Christian imagery in the movie, but I’m not sure how significant it was. That’s another one of those bits I’m still working on.