After more than a month of extreme anticipation, I was finally able to see Paranormal Activity last night. What did I think of it? Well you’ll have to keep reading to find out.
By now I feel that most people already to know the story of this little horror indie movie that could. Paramount bought it for $15,000 in order to remake it, they screened it for audiences, many walked out because the film was too scary, Paramount said ‘Hey maybe we got something here!’ a copy of the film ended up on Spielberg’s desk, he watched it, got locked in his own room, send the movie back to Paramount and swore it was ‘haunted.’ Well the web has been going crazy ever since and I think it’s impossible to hear about the history of the film and not be just a little bit skeptical/dying to see it.
Last week Paramount held a special screening of the film at the Arclight. It was the single worst planned event of all time. Dave, Adam, Chelsey and I ended up waiting hours in a cramped parking garage only to be told there were too many people there and then they sent us home with shitty t-shirts. I think that the team who worked the event from Paramount were FUCKING IDIOTS especially the dumb bitch in the green shirt. Sense a bit of hostility from me? Well it’s actually a lot. We were all pissed but I made it clear that it was important to separate the idiotic Paramount publicity team and the film itself. If you ever read this dumb bitch in the green shirt from Paramount, FUCK YOU.

(Picture above is THE bitch in the green shit!)

Several days later, they announced that they’d be having select screening of the film at the Arclight at midnight. I immediately bought the 4 of us tickets for the first showing at 12:01 Thursday night. We all anticipated the date throughout the week. The day of the showing we decided to have a celebratory/ anticipation dinner at our favorite restaurant Palermo’s. As we enjoyed delicious pizza, Caesar salad, we relaxed in knowing our seats were reserved and guaranteed. We wouldn’t need to be seeing the dumb bitch in the green shirt at all. Headed over to the Arclight and walked into the lobby ready to redeem the tickets with my credit card. Only problem was my credit card had suddenly gone missing. I freaked, Dave and Chelsey went back to Palermo’s to see if it was there. Luckily, Adams former co-worker worked at guest services. She printed out our tickets while Dave and Chelsey successfully retrieved my card from Palermo’s. Thank you guys soooo much!!! ran to 7-11 to pick up some snacks for the movie, met up with everyone. As we entered the theater I had several different candies and a water smuggled in my pockets, Chelsey’s purse was getting ready to explode from all the drinks we stuffed in it.
Finally we were sitting in our seats. As the lights dimmed, my anticipation shot through the roof. The movie began and though it was slow, I was pretty hooked. The haunts start off small but become pretty huge. There was one point where I literally jumped right out of my seat. I looked exactly like all those in the trailer for the film. Chelsey, Dave and I were squealing the entire second half of the film while Adam sat cool and collectively. I don’t think ANYTHING phases him anymore. The last 10 minutes of the film was pretty dire. Just as the suspense, anxiety and overall intensity of the film was at it’s height. The movie just ended. It kinda reminded me of the scene in Signs when they run down to the basement and just as you think they’re cornered and all the aliens are about to come into the door, the scene just ended. I remember with Signs that I was dying from all my nerves then once the scene cut I was left with a puzzled look on my face. That’s how I felt with Paranormal Activity. The film had me at such an extremely vulnerable level and then it just ended. I’m not saying that the movie wasn’t terrifying, I just thought that it was way too short. I wish there would have been at least 20 more minutes then I would have felt satisfied.

I think the movie was effective in scaring the shit out of us because as Dave decided to share personal ghost stories with us, I was screaming at the top of my lungs ‘Shut the fuck up!!!! STOP! NOW! I’m serious!!!’ I liked the movie A LOT. I’m just not in love with it……..yet

Movie Grade: B

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Mi Vida, Movie Reviews, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.