Introduction: I liked the first Paranormal Activity. It built upon
"that fear." You know, that fear we all have when we're alone inside a
moderately sized home at night and we hear weird noises and instead of
thinking "Sh*t, man, that's just rats and sh*t" we instead think "Sh*t,
man! That's ghosts and sh*t!" It feeds on our primitive and superstitious fears that are really just caused by piping. Seriously, ghosts are pipes. But as the series continued with sequel upon sequel
the novelty wore off and we realized that our actual piping is more
frightening. Omg! It's clogged with hair!
Jump Scares: So imagine you're sitting at home reading this totally
awesome review when someone suddenly grabs you from behind and you
scream like the sissy you secretly are, then you turn and see it's just
your friend *insert name here*, and you sigh in relief. Is that fear?
F*ck no. It's surprise, and it's a bullsh*t tactic used by Hollywood
horror movies into making you think you were scared. Jump scares can
only work with paranoia, build-up, and something ACTUALLY SCARY. Even if
something is scary though it can't be shown over and over or else it
will desensitize the audience. This is the problem with the Paranormal
Activity series since it's become commonplace and even comical as we
imagine a demon chicken playing pranks on some group of vanilla
characters we're expected to deduce as a family. Speaking of
characters...
Bland Characters: One thing I appreciated about the original PA was
that the characters felt real. You couldn't even tell if they were
reading a script or doing improve. It felt natural. Which worked with the
film's normal housing setting. Then the second one came out. It was the
sequel Hollywood made and instead of feeling natural the characters
felt more vanilla than my vanilla wallpaper (which is very vanilla). In
the latest one though they actually come off as assholes as they
isolate a kid because he's odd. ALL KIDS ARE ODD. YOU DESERVE GETTING
KILLED. DAFUQ IS WRONG WITH YOU. The only thing they could think of
doing is set up a lot of security cameras around the house because they
were scared of shadows and noises...
A Lot of Security Cameras: Found footage movies seem to be the new
hot thing. Which is code for bullsh*t gimmicks. It all started with the
Blair Witch Project and it's final image of a person in a corner, but
that film wasn't about reality; it was about people going into a panic
out of fear. And just like everything that becomes popular in the box
office Hollywood milked the hell out of it without even understanding
how it works. Now we have so much shaking in simple camera shots I
wouldn't be surprised if full-body dyslexics were hired as cameramen.
Even if it doesn't have shaky camera and it's just a stationary shot
it's bland and uninteresting. It takes out the cinematic in
cinematic--a. PA is so full of bland shots it makes pornography look
worthy of an Oscar nomination.
Conclusion: PA is the new Saw. It started off small but grew into a
Halloween franchise except you can't even dress up as an awesome
monster. You could put on a demonic animal outfit with the name Tobi written on
the chest and follow people around but something like that that would actually be scary. So yeah... don't see Paranormal Activity 4... it's bad...
Oh! Disney is making another Star Wars movie! Hopefully I'll finally be
able to say that more than half of the franchise is worth watching! :D
