Oct 22, 2009

paranormal activity review

ok so just finished watching paranormal activity. every since i first heard of this movie i really wanted to see it. and it's been a long time (that review was written in jan 2008). i generally don't like buying into the hype but that seems to be the way paramount want to sell it with a trailer like this:



looks pretty good right? yeah i thought so too. paramount seems to be marketing this movie in a weird way. it was filmed in 2007. all the early reviews i read were very good, so what the hell paramount!? what's the hold up? now in 2009 they've decided for some reason it's time to release it. but they can't just release it, that'd be too easy. it's already a movie with nothing but good reviews so let's release this as agonisingly slowly as possible with exclusive tiny screenings in america first, then have all the new good reviews push people into demanding their local cinema show it - which only applies to america. which of course leads to more people raving about it.

well yesturday a good quality version of the movie leaked online. usually i normally make a rule of going to the cinema to see a new film i wanna see whenever possible, obviously. it's just better. but in this case i'm happy to download it early. fuck you paramount. if this had been available to see at any cinema around me between 2007 and now i'd be more than happy to go pay to see it for a better experience. that said i'll probably pay to go see it anyway when it comes out (plus apparently there's some alternate endings in existence...).

sorry. paramount rant over.

i thought blair witch project was ok. cloverfield was great and i loved rec/quarantine (also check out the rec 2 trailer if you haven't already 'cause that looks fucking great!). but hype's a difficult thing. i read alot of hype behind the film (as any of my twitter followers will probably know) but overall i still really liked it. there are parts in the film that are genuinely really creepy. more so than... well probably any film i can think of. but i can see it turning into another blair witch project. the early adopters (see the over reactions of the dumb americans in the trailer) will say how fucking scary the film was and then everyone else will go in with high expectations and say it's more stupid than scary. so you can't win either way.

i really liked it. maybe a little more than drag me to hell because it's going for scary and less comedy. the more i think about the ending i saw the creepier it seems but there are so many different ways it could have gone so i look forward to seeing the dvd extras when it eventually comes out.

i recommend you watch it. if you don't believe the hype then you'll probably really like it... if that makes sense.

4 creepy goings on out of 5.