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Hey guys. Stay tuned to new reviews coming for The Informant! and Spike Jonze's highly anticipated Where the Wild Things Are.

How my rating scale works...

So my rating scale is probably unoriginal but it's the easiest way to rate the movies I see on a 1-10 scale. While a 6/10 would be failing in an academic context, any movie in my mind above a 6/10 is somewhat worth seeing. Obviously the higher the number, the better the movie. But do note that not many movies will reach a full 10/10 because I'm a hard movie goer to impress. So yes my scale is curved a a bit.

So essentially, a 5-6/10 is roughly a C- to C. 6-7/10 is a C to a C+. 7-8/10 is a C+ to B- and so on. Anything below a 6/10 is negligible. So now you know how my scale works, enjoy my reviews!

Paranormal Activity: Win or Bust?

The horror movie industry in recent times has always been a miss or hit—I say miss before hit because majority of them have been mostly misses. What with their generic and unoriginal plots, pointless attempts at remakes or outrageous amounts of gore and extreme peril, recent horror movies have been nothing but repetitions of each other mimicking the same ideas and principles of preceding movies of the genre. It’s a tough situation because majority of what has been thought of has been done and there has seldom been a horror movie to brag about spending a solid $10.50 on at the box office, Quarantine and The Decent being excluded. But Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity manages to outrageously rescue itself out of the mucky pool of run-of-the-mill horror movies and I’ll explain why.

For starters, the perspective of the movie is done in the Blair Witch Project-esque first-person view. It’s something that has rather been a hit or miss within its own principles, just like the horror genre itself. But the way Peli directs the movie revolutionizes the first-person view makes it stand out from the other first-person films which are mostly nauseating yet somewhat effective *cough*Quarantine*cough*Cloverfield*cough* (granted they were both decent films however).

That said it takes place in the house of a couple named Katie and Micah in lovely San Diego, California. Throughout her life Katie has been experiencing paranormal activity and no matter where she goes it seems to follow her. Her skeptical boyfriend tries to take control of the situation by documenting what happens with a shiny new camera that he acquires, which is what you see as the film. The abnormal activity progress as the tension and stress between the couple escalates from the activities. Then before you know it, all hell breaks lose, but not in the traditional horror movie style that everyone’s come to know and expect.

Progression coupled with suspense is one of the key highlights in Paranormal Activity. The way the film projects how matters keep getting exceedingly worse for Katie and Micah as time goes on is what makes everyone sit at the edge of their seat. I can’t remember the last time a film had me this tense. Every one moment forward captured some sort of suspense in some way shape or form. Whether the camera was staring at the wall because Katie and Micah were tensely arguing what to do with their situation, or sitting in the bedroom on a tripod while they’re asleep—which was the primary time when the activity occurred—you cannot help but wonder what the hell is going to happen next. There are no expectations to be had and part of that comes with the progression and timing.

At first the film started off a bit slow but within the slow pacing comes important background information. In addition, it adds realism. However, combined with the suspense that you know something big is going to happen, the pacing never becomes painstaking. As each night that something happened is filmed, something of larger scale happens. So the pacing is never off. And the fear comes from the pure and genuine manipulation of your imagination.

What truly separates Paranormal Activity from the rest of the horror genre—also adding to the originality—is the fact that the fear doesn’t come from a visible source like a ghost, or some outrageous monster or the devil himself. Nor does the fear come in the form of ear-piercing, silence-breaking loud noises or out-of-nowhere pop outs but in a very eerie and realistic way. It’s realistic because of how the movie takes advantage of the common fear of being afraid of a dark, quiet and lonely house, particularly at night. Whether it’s doors slamming or hearing loud footsteps or banging, it all manages to reach the imagination in all of us and let it loose like a bat out of hell. But the pacing doesn't allow the effects of the thrills drag on and make the movie so boring that you forget that you're watching a horror movie. The way the fear builds from the progression and suspense is damn-near perfect and there are very very few movies in this genre that can actually do this. If I were to name a movie that best utilized this technique last was M. Night Shyamalan's Signs.

Couple the realistic scares, the pace, the progression, realism, and suspense and you have a genuinely thrilling and compelling horror film with none of the riff-raff/hokey-poky sacks of far-fetched bull, or traditional loud noises and outrageous gore in peril. As of this review’s publishing date, Paranormal Activity holds an 8.6 out of 10 on the user’s rating of IMDB and an 88% on RottenTomatoes, some of the hardest film critics to impress. Additionally, throughout the duration of the movie, in a theater full of teenagers and college students—a rough crowd—everyone remained silent and vigilant as the relentless suspense just kept everyone tense. In fact, there are stories of viewers leaving the theater mid-film, but not out of displeasure but out of pure fright, which happened during my viewing time. Adding to the fact that Oren Peri directed and produced this film in a time frame of seven days and an economy-car budget of $15,000, you know this movie deserves some recognition, albeit a lot!

Win or Bust?

Win 9/10

Verdict: Expanding on the slowly dying first-person perspective and exemplifying the mockumentary method with such a tight budget, Paranormal Activity outshines anything of recent times in the horror film industry with unforgiving suspense and compelling direction, also proving that there's still hope in the horror film industry.

Movie poster credits: Paramount Pictures