I have avoided Paranormal Activity for over a decade because of its reputation. The whole movie is one where nothing happens. All of the scares are cheap. Like, a potted plant falls over and that’s supposed to be scary. (Incidentally, that doesn’t happen in the movie. I was waiting the whole time for a falling potted plant and it turns out that I was misinformed.) There might also be my lingering affection for The Blair Witch Project. A part of me was resentful that this movie became, for better or worse, the found footage darling.

I decided, though, that it was time to check out the movie that made household names out of director Oren Peli and producer Jason Blum. It was partly because someone made the convincing argument that Paranormal Activity and its security footage aesthetic was more responsible for the late 2000’s/early 2010’s found footage boom than The Blair Witch Project was. Then, when I read some plot synopses of the Paranormal Activity sequels and prequels, I realized that the movie series was absolutely mad. Apparently a devil cult, child soldiers bred for evil, and time travel are involved? How did I miss this? I am a simple movie viewer, and I am all about that action.

The first movie, though, is more or less exactly what I expected. (The Marked Ones and The Ghost Dimension will have to be the icing on my cake.) We follow Katie (Featherton) and Micah (Sloat), who respect the Blair Witch tradition and go by their real names. Micah is a man who has a camera and he will use it anywhere, respecting not even the boundaries of not filming in the bathroom. It’s also a big honking professional grade camera, too, so lugging that thing around everywhere is awkward. This elephant in the room is addressed many times by Katie. She screams when she sees a spider, and then is angry when she discovers that Micah reached for his camera first before going to help her. Clearly this man had a problem. Is it possible that he loves his camera more than Katie?

The house is plagued by weird noises and goings on. While most of us would assume this is the result of lazy contractors, our couple decide that this is a ghost. Micah then stumbles on a brilliant idea: he will use the camera to film them while they sleep and also leave the bedroom door open. My biggest question: why doesn’t Katie leave him right there and then? For God’s sake, who likes being filmed when they sleep?

Anyway, the spookies happen.

All credit to Oren Peli, by the way: he is really good at manipulating the pacing and the use of silence to create suspense. This movie didn’t make $193 million because people like to sit through two hours of security footage. He gives you just enough. The repetitive shots of the same familiar bedroom puts you in a zen state. Everything has to be in its place perfectly. There’s the door, there’s the couple, there’s the spooky dark hallway beyond because that door is always open for some reason. It has to look the same. Any minor change, such as say the door opening and closing, is truly unnerving.

Also an effective scare: how big this suburban house is. Peli didn’t set his movie in, say, an old Victorian house that the couple was refurbishing. It’s a boring two-story house made of blank drywall and Home Depot grade fixtures. The pictures on the wall look like something they got from Wal-Mart. It was probably built in the late 90’s based on how boring that kitchen is. Bland wood grain cabinets, plastic white refrigerators and microwaves, etc.

But see… that got to me. When I was younger, I lived in a subarban house similar to the one from the movie. The bedrooms were on the second floor. The first floor opened to a corridor to the left and a living area on the light only lit by a chandelier. There’s nothing creepier than hearing a noise downstairs, trying to quietly creep out of your room, and peering to the darkened floors below to see if you can spot something on the floor below without someone maybe seeing you. It’s probably the house settling… right?

Rating: 4/5 stars