Nerd_Man reviews - Paranormal Activity

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UxLEqd074]Paranormal Activity[/url] is a film written and directed by Oren Peli. This film was first ever showed to an audience in 2007 at a film festival. Since then, Paranormal Activity has been popping up here and there at various film festivals and getting word of mouth by people who have seen it. Here it is now, 2009, and Paranormal Activity has been officially released to a very limited amount of theaters. This Indie film has had a long journey, but now it's finally released. For most people, there probably isn't a theater around them in America that shows this film - but no worries, it is now official that October 16th is the big day for this film and it will be released nationwide. If you're unlucky enough to have it not released at a theater near you, hopefully you can wait for another week.

So anyways, about that film... It's being described as one of the scariest movies ever by a lot of people, but I would not say it's the scariest film I've ever seen, but it was definitely creepy and got me nervous many times. I've seen a lot of messed up things in life, so it's not easy to scare me anymore; but to make me nervous and cringe at the edge of my seat, then the film has done the job right.
I certainly understand why this film is so scary for many people. It's just so realistic, and it's hard to believe that I just paid to watch people act the whole time. It didn't feel like acting at all, it felt just like what the film intended it to be: with a couple under the suspicion of strange activities going on around their house at night and one day felt like filming around their house to see if they could pick up any disturbances. The film was so realistic, that when the movie finished, a guy across the theater asked: "So wait, was this real, or not?" -- That might have been a stupid question to ask, but I think that question alone just shows that this film is about as realistic as it gets and doesn't fall under the typical cliches that we're used to seeing. We don't need constant blood and guts and shock value with CGI monsters to creep us out. Those gimmicks just get boring after a while. It's a good thing that Paranormal Activity didn't go for any of that. Paranormal Activity really focused on the quiet moments of horror. I think it's the quiet moments that effect people the most. Humans are not meant to relate real life with things popping up constantly in your face - we much better relate with the quiet things and the sense of wonder of what could possibly be the meanings of certain things. I think that's where this film is most effective and is able to really disturb a lot of people.

Overall, Paranormal Activity, is what I would think, is definitely a film that does something good for the horror genre. It's good to know that the horror genre isn't completely dead. I think most mainstream film studios should seriously take a look at what Paranormal Activity did and try to learn a thing or two about what is really some of the most basic, yet effective horror techniques. 8/10