Entertainment, Movies - Navy Times

Film review: ‘Paranormal Activity’

“Paranormal Activity,” a film ostensibly made up of video recordings made by a young couple who believe frightening things are happening in their house as they sleep, has been amassing intense word-of-mouth demand for two weeks after distributor Paramount began an innovative campaign to sneak it into the pop-culture consciousness.

It began with a low-key rollout in a handful of college towns, where young fans began spreading word about the midnight-only screenings via blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Meanwhile, the studio set up an Internet petition for would-be ticket buyers to request screenings in their towns.

That led to a rollout Oct. 9 in 40 cities, which brought in $7.9 million for the weekend. Paramount announced Oct. 10 that it had received more than 1 million requests — the goal it promised would trigger a nationwide release for the next weekend.

It’s a stunning response for director Oren Peli, a software programmer-turned-filmmaker who was working with undiscovered actors and a budget of about $15,000.

No less than Steven Spielberg, whose DreamWorks Studios initially acquired the independent film during its then-partnership with Paramount, has come out to endorse the homemade scarefest. He praised the freshman director for trapping the audience as an inert observer of the bizarre events plaguing this otherwise normal couple.

“We’re the camera,” Spielberg marvels. “Oren gets us looking at every corner, and we start searching the shadows. And he cast it with two people [Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat] with such natural gifts of just being existent in the moment.”

Peli shot “Paranormal Activity” in his own house two years ago and has just been hired to make another “found footage”-style video movie called “Area 51,” with obvious overtones of UFO mythology.

In “Paranormal Activity,” he chills moviegoers by manipulating shadows and sound, capturing menacing events carried out by an increasingly hostile presence.

“Nothing you could ever show, with props or CGI, is ever going to be as scary as your imagination,” Peli says. “There’s just this invisible force. It could be right next to you.”