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So I guess that this new genre is here to stay: Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Quarantine(and its Spanish original).
So it works, and works well if you accept the usual gaps in logic required to enjoy this sort of thing.
The build-up was nice, and at a certain point the doomed/trapped feeling was palpable.
The ending though … was a bit forced, and showed a bit too much. I didn’t need the entire ending laid out.
My understanding is that the ending was changed when it was released theatrically- I wonder what the original was?
Oh, and holy crap, was that a creepy movie or what? Not bad for $11000.
Pretty good little movie. Did a much better job of it than Blair Witch, IMHO.
I just saw it tonight. It made me feel more sick than anything. The shaky camera stuff was nauseating. I drove over an hour to see it, and I was somewhat disappointed. I think the creepiest part was when Katie got out bed, and just stared at Micah for 3 hours. Micah had some good one liners too. It was entertaining, but I should have waited for the DVD.
Yeah, pretty good movie, but not worth an hour’s drive. I rated it a 6 on IMDb. Worth seeing, but not worthy of all the hype surrounding it.
I didn’t figure any movie could live up to that hype, so I wasn’t at all disappointed. I thought it was the scariest movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. It did way better than Blair Witch and Cloverfield in that using the tripod during much of the action minimized the nauseating shaky-camera bit. Plus, I felt like it didn’t rely too much on chaos to obscure the scary like Blair Witch did.
I think they did the best they could with the ending. I wish it had been a little more subtle, but with a buildup like that, you had to have something pretty shocking for it to not seem like a letdown. About 20 minutes from the end, I was starting to worry about how they were going to end it. After all the screaming, then silence downstairs, I thought that would be the end.
Spacegirl, that part got me, too. My husband and I both sleepwalk, and I can see one of us doing something like that. shudder
I only drove 10 minutes to see it, so it was totally worth it.
IIRC, the main change in the ending was adding digital effects to her face - I read that the alternate ending the studio funded was thrown out when test audiences much preferred the original ending.
I really liked it. I was very glad I didn’t see the trailer, however. The trailer practically shows every single scary moment! If I had seen the sheets puffing up in the commercial, it would have been much less effective in the movie.
I liked the ending pretty well. I would have preferred a little more ambiguity - Micah gets thrown into the camera, we see Katie, covered in blood, walk up to him and bend over him, and that’s it. Of course, they kind of shot their wad on any “is it really supernatural” discussion with the Ouija board footage, so I suppose seeing Katie’s demon face didn’t really ruin anything.
I took the hype to be a statement of proportional quality to production cost, and that was a good way to go in. It’s not the most fantastic thing ever. But considering the budget, it is PHENOMENAL.
One disappointing thing about the experience: during the time lapse footage of Katie standing by the bed, which I found unutterably creepy, several people laughed. I’m guessing they thought the rocking motion accentuated by the high speed was funny, but I wonder if it’s because they didn’t clue in that the film was sped up, and thought she was standing there doing a weird dance or something.
In any case, I will never forget the scene of her getting dragged out of bed. Brrrrr.
I had seen her getting dragged out of bed in one of the trailers, I think. I wish I hadn’t been prepared for it. But, what I wasn’t prepared for was her screaming, both then and after she goes downstairs at the end. She did a great job.
We had a couple of gigglers in the theater when I saw it, too. And two guys who kept getting up and going out. It was a bit distracting. Fortunately, one of the gigglers turned into one of the screamers at the end. 
I’d never been to a movie before where multiple people didn’t just gasp and jump, but actually shrieked. It was great.
I thought parts were tense, but not scary. Except for the night scenes and when Micah goes into the attic, I thought it was kinda boring actually. The creepiest part was Katie just standing at the side of the bed for hours. This may have to do with the audience I saw it with though, which was made up of mostly annoying teenagers who would fake-scream at anything and yell stupid comments, so there really was no scary atmosphere in the room.
Devin Farici at chud.com makes an excellent point: Paranormal Activity is the perfect scary movie to see on DVD.
Sure, there’s something to be gained by seeing some scary movies with a large group of people, but I think that Paranormal Activity would be most effective being watched at home.
When I saw it a couple of weekends ago, the final scare was ruined by someone in the audience who, in their fright, felt the need to speak to the demon. I know that happens with a lot of audiences (with a lot of different types of movies, not all of them involving demons), and it can add to the experience, but Paranormal Activity, for me at least, doesn’t benefit from audience participation.
The time-lapse footage seems to have polarized those who have seen the movie – it either creeps them right out or it makes them laugh. For me, they were easily the most unsettling parts of the movie – and I can’t recall ever seeing anything quite like it.
I agree that the trailer does give too much away: there aren’t a whole lot of “jump” moments in this movie to being with (I was pleased that it went the route instead of building a sense of dread), and the trailer wasted some of them.
I wonder if the trailer would have been more effective if it had just shown the audience’s reactions rather than including footage of the movie itself, leaving people watching the trailer to wonder exactly what was happening on-screen.
I had a similarly frustrating theater experience. The theater was nearly empty when I saw the film but there was a couple sitting a few rows back from me. Every time anything scary happened, the guy chuckled loudly. I don’t know if it was nervous laughter, or if he was laughing at his girlfriend for jumping, but either way it was really annoying and kept taking me out of the movie.
Yeah, I spent the entire movie waiting for her to be dragged down the hallway, and for the husband to be thrown at the camera. Knowing that it was going to happen diminished the effect when it finally did.
One thing really bugged me about the movie- there’s no way in hell I could’ve fallen asleep after the first night or two. Not a chance. I certainly couldn’t have slept next to the open door with only a sheet to protect me. I don’t care if the whatever-it-is is going to follow us to wherever we go, we’re gettin’ the hell out of here.
I actually had to leave the theater after 20 minutes of the movie because I felt so nauseated- I didn’t throw up but I felt sick all night. I think I’ll just wait for the DVD.
In the original ending, they expanded on the endgame. In the original ending, we don’t get Micah bounced off the camera. We do get a bloody Katie zoned out in the bedroom for two days, the discovery of a dead Micah on the ground floor and Katie coming out of it just in time to get her knife holding butt gunned down by the responding police.
The current ending has a nice ambiguity to it. And apparently the ghost rumble bass effects were added to the current version.
really? That sounds kinda dumb. I like the idea of demon-possessed Katie still wandering around California
Anybody else think that Micah was a douchebag? Still, he’s a better man than me. If a demon was following my girlfriend and a photo of me suddenly smashed with claw marks through my face the conversation would approximately be: “You know I love you, and no matter what happens I’ll only be a phone call away.”
Thankfully I saw it yesterday in the afternoon and there were maybe fifteen people in the theater all of whom kept their mouths shut. The movie did a good job of building tension via off camera noise and activity, and what you did see on camera was kept to a bare minimum which also helped build tension; really the whole movie was an exercise in “anticipation of the bang”. I think I would’ve preferred one of the alternate endings though.
One thing impressed and and surprised me was Katie getting dragged down the hall. The movie was very low budget, so how’d they get that to look so real?
I really want my girlfriend to see it because it would scare the shit out of her, and I find that highly entertaining.
My wife and I went to see it tonight. YAWN. It was mildly creepy in spots, but overall I have NO idea why so many people are wetting themselves with fright over this movie.
The Emperor has no clothes.
Asylum, I thought the same thing about the effects – well done for $11,000. Especially the getting pulled out of bed scene.
One of the creepiest movies I have ever seen. Every time they went to bed I could feel my blood pressure rise, wondering what was next.
I was in a good audience, too. Girls screaming. Everyone jumping. Nervous laughter – the “oh my god, that was scary” laughter. People cringing whenever it was time for another night-vision scene.
I thought it was an okay film. Not awful; not fantastic. One handy bonus was that the shaky-cam didn’t make me want to puke, which is rare for films using that technique.
Didn’t find it scary or creepy at all.