Voilà, box office gold scraped from the sheer face of the cultural cliff. And Internet blitzes on Facebook pages and Twitter. That led to midnight-only showings of the pic in a handful of college towns. But after test-screening the original, the audience’s gasping reaction changed their minds. When the big studio boys picked it up, they were intent on re-shooting something more polished for the theatrical run. Reportedly shot by writer/director Oren Peli in his own house on a miniscule budget of only $15,000 ( Blair Witch came in at $60,000), the mostly ad-libbed piece was created in a week. Paranormal Activity has very clearly pulled its filming and distribution strategy from that same successful playbook. But the viral popularity that sprung from its groundbreaking use of the Internet-including a Web campaign that suggested the footage it contained was the real deal-made the little film into a mega-blockbuster. Paranormal activity movie#That shaky-handed, one-camera pseudo docu-thriller was presented as an amateur movie project made by three students who supposedly disappeared during its making. Almost catatonic, she clutches a small wooden cross so tightly that her hand bleeds.īack in 1999 a little independent horror flick called The Blair Witch Project took moviegoers by surprise. Katie talks of praying as a child that the demon would go away. (Its pointer ultimately begins to move on its own and it bursts into flames.) He pledges to obey Katie’s new rules about dealing with the demon, and his oath ends with, “So help me God!” But he’s already borrowed a Ouija board, so the damage is already done. Katie listens and takes the advice to heart. He strongly states that using such “communication” tools as Ouija boards might have disastrous results. And that’s when he warns Katie not to “encourage” it by giving it any attention. The psychic says he quickly senses that the threat is demonic in nature. Paranormal activity professional#Instead, Micah and Katie consult a professional psychic who professes to be an expert in hauntings perpetrated by “human spirits.” The frightened pair never turns to the church or God for help, however. The whole premise of Paranormal Activity revolves around dark supernatural happenings taking place in a young couple’s home. Paranormal activity full#He’s determined to “solve the problem.” So it’s full steam ahead on the paranormal express. Micah’s already recorded the bedroom door moving all on its own at 2 a.m. So Katie begs Micah to drop the late-night videoing. And she gets a bit frantic after a visiting psychic reports that negative energy or attempts at poltergeist communication could make things worse. Not that he really believes in any of this stuff. To him, the stories are just a great excuse to go out and buy a cool video camera so he can try to capture shadowy thumps and bumps in the night. (How do you bring up the topic of a demonic entity that lounges around in your bedroom?) Even after he finds out, though, her knucklehead beau doesn’t seem to mind all that much. Of course, the now twentysomething Katie neglected to mention any of that to her boyfriend Micah before he moved in. And since then she’s suffered with nightmares and had a recurring sense of a shadowy figure lurking at the foot of her bed. But she’s convinced that a demonic boogieman burned her house down when she was a kid. Nobody else has actually seen this thing or shared in Katie’s horrors. Since she was 8 she’s had what amounts to an evil spirit siphoning off her slumber. But both of those would be a welcome break for Katie.
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