Demonizing suburbia (Paranormal Activity)

By the time Paranormal Activity comes to Australia, where I'm based, it is not just "the sleeper hit of the year", it's "the marketing story of the year" (at least in the US). Much has been written about the film's production-budget-to-box-office ratio: $15K to $40 million (at the time of writing, but headed towards $120-150 million). Much has been written about the Paramount's clever marketing strategy, which used social media and a platform release in the US to create the illusion that demand outstripped supply.

But is it any good?

Micah and Katie are a young middle-class couple, married 3 years, living in a typical suburban house. When the film opens, we learn that Katie's been hearing things go bump in the night. Again. Micah's bought a camera and intends to film their bedroom through the night, hoping to catch whatever supernatural presence is breathing down his wife's neck.

The premise of Paranormal Activity - a no-budget staple made popular by the phenomenal success of The Blair Witch Project a decade ago, a film it emulates in more ways than one - is that the tapes we are watching are the very tapes recorded in Micah's camera. The illusion, designed to make the footage seem real (and thus scarier), is reinforced by the complete absence of titles and end credits, and the fact that the characters' names are those of the actors (Katie Fatherston and Micah Sloat).

The film, a slow building creepfest, works precisely because the footage, stripped of all artifice, facilitates the suspension of disbelief. At times Paranormal Activity feels like an overlong YouTube video, albeit one without a timeline you can skip forward on. The tedium works in the film's favour, making the viewer antsy: if it's boring it had to be real, right?

Thanks to the convincing performances by Katie Fatherston and Micah Sloat and a script which knows not to indulge the temptations of the genre (gore, cheap frights, irrational behaviour on the part of its characters), Paranormal Activity succeeds in its modest ambitions. Most viewers will be put through a very spooky, occasionally scary experience (half the fun of watching this film is the audience reaction: the film is best experienced in a full cinema).

Beyond a good claustrophobic scare, Oren Peli's film offers no hidden depths and is easily forgotten afterwards. The key to the film's efficiency is its depiction of dull normalcy. Katie and Micah are The Most Boring Couple in the World. Her hobby is making bead necklaces, his is strumming his electric guitar (sans amp, of course). Their house is ugly. The downside is that you never get very attached to these characters, and when they are threatened, it's hard not to shrug and think that perhaps their persecution is not entirely undeserved.

In truth, the demon that haunts them is the only thing that makes Micah and Katie interesting, which begs the question of its metaphorical significance. Unlike the genre-defying Antichrist, another film where an arrogant man tries to rid his partner of her demons, we are never given any clues here.

Hidden meanings, if any were intended (I think not: see the original 2007 ending) are barely hinted at. Is the haunting brought about by suburban, middle class ennui? Is the demon a personification of Katie's unacknowledged boredom? And, in this terminally dull context,

is possession by the devil such a bad thing? Let's be honest, in that last frame, looking deep into Katie's eyes, didn't she seem happier, more, shall we say... satisfied?

Paranormal Activity is out now in the US. It's released in the UK on 27 November, in Australia on December 3rd.

Demonizing suburbia (Paranormal Activity)