Reviews

Review: Paranormal Activity

More than cheap thrills

By Peter Keough | October 15, 2009

2.5 Stars

The "normal" puts the chills in Paranormal Activity. The illusion of amateur camerawork and everyday life can make a moving door or a shadow a lot scarier than an elaborate CGI effect, as TheBlair Witch Project (1999) proved. In what seems a homemade Ghost Hunters episode, yuppie couple Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston) employ a video camera to find out what's been going bump in the night.

By the time they get to "Night #20" things have gotten a little repetitious and predictable, but Oren Peli in his feature debut has a few jolts in store, and the natural performances of the cast and the aura of reality provided by the video format keep the tension high. Peli also has something more than cheap thrills in mind, as the film unobtrusively explores the nature of male/female relationships and of filmmaking itself.

It does much the same job as Lars von Trier's upcoming Antichrist, but spares the gory details.

Review: Antichrist
Lars von Trier’s controversial freak-out is Saw VI as told by Carl Dreyer. Is that a good thing? It certainly has grabbed everybody’s attention. I’m torn between dismissing the film as gross-out juvenilia and regarding it as raw religious mythmaking.
Interview: Lars von Trier of Antichrist
Maybe it’s the blurring effect of the Skype technology through which I’m interviewing him as he sits worried and Buddha-like in his headquarters in Denmark (he has a phobia about airplanes, among other things), but Lars von Trier seems like an okay guy.
Tales of the Providence Ghost Tour
You know what you get when you're a 375-year-old New England city where many homes are known more for their past occupants than their current ones? Ghosts. Lots of ghosts.
Cannes goods
Quick — name a world-class film-festival administrator willing to reveal that at age 12 he was titillated by the sight of clodhopper-shod Minnie Mouse stomping on Mickey's tail in a French comic book.
Less than equal
This story has a bias. It’s in favor of human rights for all people.
Review: Atrocious
When a central character spends enough time looking through the distorting lens of a camera, eventually something very nasty is going to show up.
The Paranormal Bikers are a new breed of ghost hunters
What really frightens paranormal investigators, those folks who go looking for ghouls? Some will tell you it's the uncomfortable feeling they sometimes get when leaving the scene — a feeling that someone, or something, wants to follow them home.
Carl and Keith Johnson are spreading the ghostly gospel
Rhode Island's Ghost Rush — the books, the TV shows, the tours — often seems built to squeeze a little money out of a haunted economy.
Review: Melancholia
Here's what we learn from Melancholia : life sucks, people are awful, we're all going to die, and good riddance. Who says Lars von Trier doesn't like happy endings?
Review: The House of the Devil
Have you walked near a college campus lately? You might notice that the ’80s are creeping into fashion, the way the ’70s did a few years back, and with the same lack of irony. It’s happening in cinemas, too — something that’s not entirely unwelcome when it comes to the horror genre.
Reichs and wrongs on the Croisette
"I beat my kids regularly. Seems to do the trick. And I deprive them of meals."
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Topics: Reviews , Lars von Trier, Lars von Trier, Parapsychology and the Paranormal, More

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ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH

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Apparently extinct since the 1930s, the Tasmanian Tiger resembled an uncanny assortment of mismatched parts from other animals. Daniel Nettheim's film is equally weird and motley.