October 9
#9 Mother’s Day (1980)
October 13
#10 Paranormal Activity (2009)

My ongoing horror movie marathon has slowed down somewhat this past weekend; I watched Mother’s Day, a Troma film from 1980 which broadly mixes satire with Last House on the Left-style horror, to variable results. (Although after watching this bizarre, intermittently funny film, it is difficult to not come away repeating a memorable dialogue exchange which takes up a full minute of screen time: “‘Punk sucks!’ ‘Disco’s stupid!’”)

But the spirit of the season returned in force last night as I dragged a kicking and screaming wife to the east side of town, to the only theater in Madison showing Paranormal Activity, the low-budget horror film generating such tremendous buzz that it is guaranteed we are mere minutes away from the inevitable backlash (and a few days away from the backlash-to-the-backlash–order your team colors now).  Comparisons to The Blair Witch Project have already become tired, but they’re hard to avoid: this is another shot-on-video production featuring supposedly “recovered” footage shot by the participants before their…unfortunate fate.  And like TBWP, the film makes pains to hide its manufactured origins, insisting upon the veracity of its material, leaving it open for a wink-wink ”it’s all real” promotional campaign which has been in use for decades in the horror genre, going back at least to 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust.  But the comparison is more vital because of the divisive reaction it will receive from audiences. 

I first saw TBWP in Seattle right when the hype was beginning to escalate, but before the hype explosion of a wide release.  I didn’t really know what the film was about apart from the basics (some people get lost in the woods, there’s something out there, and it’s “found footage”).  The theater, to its everlasting credit, generated a healthy dose of atmosphere by piping woodland sound effects into the cinema before the film’s start; and the film was a deeply unnerving experience, in part because I had no idea what was going to happen or what the parameters for the “horror” were going to be.  I left the theater rattled, disturbed, and delighted.  What seemed so extraordinary–what I most appreciated–was that the ending did three things simultaneously:

1) It expected the viewer to have been paying attention throughout the film, and subsequently did not spell out the meaning of its final image.

2) It did not directly depict its monster, relying upon the audience’s imagination to fill out the horror.

3) It was scary, mainly because of points 1 and 2.

As I’ve always been interested in what makes for a good horror film and why so many people want to be scared in the first place, The Blair Witch Project stayed in my thoughts for weeks afterward.  At a party, I encountered two women discussing the film; one had seen it and one hadn’t, and the former insisted, “Don’t go, it’s awful.  The characters are so annoying and nothing ever happens.”  She also offered the highly dubious opinion that “Anyway, no one can get lost in the woods anymore, America’s too overdeveloped,” which indicated only that she had been living in the city for too long.  Regardless, I didn’t speak up, and began to question my own opinions.  In subsequent years, those opinions hardened: TBWP is a litmus test for the imagination.  If you have a limited imagination, the film simply does not work.  It requires you to think about what you cannot see, and generates its disturbing quality from that work which your imagination provides.

After Paranormal Activity ended and a packed house (on a Tuesday night!) began to file out, I overheard many appreciative words as well as one person emphatically declaring it “the biggest piece of shit film I’ve ever seen!”  (Oddly, this summer I overheard the same opinion announced, loudly, in the middle of a screening of Public Enemies.  Maybe it was the same disgruntled patron?)  Already, then, Paranormal Activity is beginning to challenge its audience and divide them right and left. 

Certainly the plot offers nothing new or overly complex: as the film begins, Micah and Katie have already been experiencing supernatural goings-on since moving into their small, two-story suburban home, and we only pick up the events, naturally, when Micah buys a camera so he can attempt to capture the activity on tape.  He’s still not convinced it’s paranormal in nature, though Katie is, for reasons that are soon made clear.  He sets up the camera at the foot of their bed and lets it record while they sleep…and then we begin to see what they cannot, which is the central ingredient for this film’s horror: we watch the couple asleep, helpless, while the nefarious unseen being acts.

The proceedings are essentially a chess game in which one player acts, waits, and then the other responds; however, critically, one player doesn’t know the rules.  Micah is thrilled and engaged to be witnessing the supernatural.  He wants to communicate with the entity (which a local psychic quickly diagnoses as a demon, not a ghost, and therefore out of his jurisdiction); he taunts and goads it.  His girlfriend pleads with him to stop; eventually she decides it’s best to ignore it, in hopes that the increasingly hostile activity subsides.  It’s an argument which persists throughout the movie, and which provides much of its tension; I suspect viewers will quickly be allying themselves with one side or the other, before helplessness sets in and events progress to a point of no return.

The camera, of course, is not static throughout the film.  Most of the time we’re on Micah’s shoulder while he’s interrogating his girlfriend, running after bumps in the night, and obsessively watching the previous night’s footage.  To that last point, it’s worth noting the meta aspect of watching a recording of Micah watching a recording of himself (and Katie), unaware that he will then become the footage that we pore over.  Similarly, while he fast-forwards to get to the good stuff, so do we: the nighttime surveillance footage has a timestamp which, in more than a few scenes, fast-forwards for us, as though we have our finger on the button.  Cleverly, writer and director Oren Peli (who goes uncredited, so far as I could tell) actually uses this device to produce one of the creepiest moments in the film, in which the unease is generated because of what is being revealed by the act of fast-forwarding, as well as just how much time elapses (as the timer at the bottom of the screen spins on).  But the biggest scares come after long moments of stillness, as we gaze into a dark room and down that open door to the left, with a glimpse of shadowy stairs and doors, waiting for something to materialize: an unnatural sound, a disembodied shadow.  Roger Ebert nails it: ”It illustrates one of my favorite points, that silence and waiting can be more entertaining than frantic fast-cutting and berserk f/x. For extended periods here, nothing at all is happening, and believe me, you won’t be bored.” How long has it been since you’ve seen a genre horror film which relies upon being patient and observant? In a crowded theater, populated largely by teenagers, you could hear a pin drop during the “surveillance” scenes. Everyone was simply staring at the screen, studying it, and listening very closely. After the big jumps, the audience finally relented into peals of laughter, tension broken, delighted to be scared.

I don’t mean it to sound as though I believe a horror film is only meant to be a machine, tuned-up and well-oiled to produce maximum impact.  Actually I think there are two kinds of horror, not mutually exclusive.  One is the macabre, more intent on unsettling the reader/viewer, and often more thematically rich as it traffics in taboo ideas: this might be called the Frankenstein strain.  A second focuses upon generating shocks–genuinely intended to produce fear and tension: this might be called the Dracula strain.  It’s this second strain to which both Paranormal Activity and TBWP belong.  Their purpose is to evoke fear.  This is every bit as artistically valid a goal as that of a catharsis drama, and should not be dismissed out of hand (which is what A.O. Scott does in his sniffy and unintentionally humorous appraisal of PA for the NY Times).  Similarly, no one should be ashamed for wanting to be scared, nor to explore their fears.  Only by doing this can we better understand them.

After the film was over, my wife was deeply bothered, and did not want, that night, to go to sleep in a dark house.  I asked her why: “You’re a rational person.  You’re a scientist.  You don’t believe in demons or ghosts.  You don’t believe these things are real.” 

She said, “I do when the lights are out.” 

And it’s that simple contradiction which stories like Paranormal Activity were meant to draw into the open, like a camcorder capturing the shadow of a ghost.