Paranormal Activity
October 2, 2010
The smash hit horror phenomenon “Paranormal Activity” (2007) is riding high in the U K horror charts and I hear a sequel is on the way. Films like “Paranormal Ascendancy” (2008) and “Paranormal Entity” (2009) appear to be capitalising on the success of this acclaimed scary movie which has terrified audiences worldwide.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1179904/
I got reading about sleep paralysis on numerous occasions in conjunction with the film’s imagery which I thought was an interesting thing to ponder. In classical art and literature, sleep paralysis has been interpereted in a number of ways, including demonic possession, hallucinatory experience (sometimes linked to substance abuse), and live burials. I remember two films released when I was a boy that drew imagery based upon ideas of sleep paralysis, “The Serpent And The Rainbow” (1988) and “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990), both of which I think are very effective in terms of horror.
Dreams and dream states have long occupied the minds of genre filmmakers. For example, some of my favourite horror films like “City Of The Living Dead” (1980), “Night Of The Hunted” (1980), and “A Nightmare On Elm Street” (1984), I relate to my experiences of lucid dreaming. Dreams and nightmares have long been translated in terms of terror, and the word commonly applied by film students is oneiric.
‘Don’t you smile like you’re so happy with yourself.’
A classic line taken from future classic “Paranormal Activity” that is spoken between the couple at the heart of the film. They revel in their own personal indulgence for much of the running time, inviting the viewer to observe them together in their luxury abode. They are priveledged enough to test the limits of tedium, with an excess of recorded home video footage that carries little in the way of palpable atmosphere. The couple are intolerant of others, making dismissive comments and rude gestures, and they are largely self-contained. But is their boredom fascinating, as boredom so often can be, or is it simply boring?
‘Night of the Living Dead plumbed untouched depths of frantic despair, all-pervading hopelessness and nihilist terror while delivering visceral gross-out horror in the allegorical process.’
- Alan Jones, ‘Night of the Living Dead’
It’s a question most people appear to have different answers to, with “Paranormal Activity” establishing itself as a divisive exercise in scare tactics that has not yet been embraced by everybody. It makes me think of the whole no budget D.I.Y. aesthetic and where it can potentially take us. There were some films that punks in the 1970s took as their own because they believed the makers were aiming to achieve similar goals in the arena of independent film as bands were seeking to do on the fringes of the music industry. Punks came from all backgrounds, and they understood boredom better than anyone because they lived it, which is why it gathered pace as a movement. The same can be said of low finance, independent genre filmmakers who were out stealing footage, often without permits, working tough hours when units could be assembled, and thinking in filmic logic wherever they went. I don’t think “Paranormal Activity” falls in the same bracket though, even if there is some overlap.
‘The epochal exploitation horror Last House on the Left emerged from the New York underground concurrently with the burgeoning punk movement, and was soon adopted by the freaks and misfits populating the downtown art scene, who for the first time felt like they recognised their frustrations being depicted in a horror movie. Last House was an intense visceral assault staged in purely human terms, an attack on institutionalised thinking that used techniques culled from cinema verite and anarchist film, and a penetrating social document characterised by an innate sense of nihilism, carrying with it a conterminous political subtext that felt very very real to us; the feeling that this could really happen is what they said we were feeling, but few of us were in any doubt that it already was, and as things turned out, on a far greater scale than we had imagined.’
- Tony Collins, ‘Jet Boys and Power Girls’
“Paranormal Activity” is availabe to buy on dvd. I purchased it for £3.99 which I think is a reasonable price. I will look out for the sequel. I have not seen “Paranormal Ascendancy” or “Paranormal Entity”.
