Paranormal Activity (2009)
It’s almost December gentle reader, I guess I should think about putting together a best of year list, perhaps a wrap-up that is complemented with a best of the noughties post as the first decade of the 21st century draws to its close. I thought living in the 21st century was supposed to be all teleportation devices, interstellar travel and disintegration beams? Pah, real life fails to live up to its expectations once again, at least you know where you stand with the movies. I’ve got quite a full agenda for the rest of the year, three movies booked, one of them I’m seeing on its opening day in IMAX then with friends during a welcome visit a few days later, I should have also wrapped up my assignment at Southwark which means I can luxuriate for a couple of months before thinking about what to do next. Oh, and I have one of the most anticipated NFT events I’ve ever attended to look forward to, it could be quite the crowning achievement of a decade of film-talks, previews and interviews that I’ve enjoyed over the past ten years at the South Bank. Anyway enough of this speculation, you want to know if I’m sleeping with the lights on tonight don’t you?
As much as I relished the prospect of enjoying one of my last big releases of the year in a cinema full of teenage girls (a-hem) I opted to see the alleged ‘scariest film ever‘ and coincidently ‘most profitable film ever’ ($15,000 budget against over $100 million in domestic takings alone) tonight, you have to admire the chutzpah of those Hollywood marketing gurus. In the contemporary genre de rigour ‘found footage’ format we meet the young professional Micah in a gloomy San Diego, his girlfriend Katie has been suffering visions of a malevolent spirit watching over her when she sleeps. Plagued by nightmares which is stressing their relationship Katie hesitantly agrees to let Micah film them as they sleep, an exercise designed to provoke the rational aspect of Katie’s intellect to reject such an absurd notion and overcome her paralytic condition. When the footage that emerges presents something seriously amiss, events that cannot be explained rationally, Katie hesitantly reveals that this is not the first time this has happened to her….
The film has been extraordinarily hyped, achieving favourable comparisons in terms of style, effect and marketing savvy with The Blair Witch Project which terrified film-goers a decade ago, can it match the outrageous expectations of fan-boys such moi? Well, yes, its pretty god-damn freaky, more an exercise in sheer technique than anything else, like Blair Witch events become progressively worse as the visitations occur, a palpable sense of dread emerging as the daytime footage bleeds into the nightmarishly murky witching hours. Debut director Oren Peli cleverly sets up the frame to crucially show what is happening outside the room, beyond the characters field of vision, not to mention playing on the terrifying thought of something interfering with you as you sleep, when you’re totally helpless, totally prone. Paranormal Activity plays not just on instinctive human fear of something unexplained, a threat in the dark but also something infecting your safe boundaries, in your home, something essentially other. The fact that people in the audience were freaking out when I saw it (most amusingly two guys behind me were hugging their girlfriends and muttering ‘its just a movie….its just a movie..’) means that you have to see this at the cinema, in the dark, with others.
In terms of references away from Blair Witch then this is the closest approximation I can muster, apparently the final shot of Paranormal Activity has been re-done from a suggestion by Spielberg, having just checked the original finale out I have to say he was probably right. Next up on this type of movie is The House Of The Devil which has been getting praise for its Seventies derived, Polanski inspired atmosphere, it looks pretty good but anyone stupid enough to spend the night in Tom Noonan’s house deserves to die. Oh yeah, and the fact I’m blogging this from my parents, from their cosy, well lit and populated flat as opposed to my cold, empty, isolated place is just a fucking coincidence OK? OK….
The Orphanage
I slept with all the lights on last night. The Spanish language fantasy renaissance continues with ‘El Orfanato‘, the debut of director Juan Antonio Bayona who under the tutelage and support of Guillermo Del Toro has crafted a superbly terrifying movie with a number of twists, chills and thrills.
Our heroine is Laura who with her doctor husband Carlos and adopted eight year old son return to take over the dilapidated orphanage she grew up in some thirty years ago. Simón is unaware that Laura is not his real mother and has a number of imaginary friends that he talks to whose numbers swell once he is ensconced in the orphanage with his family. Of course, they are imaginary aren’t they? After a visit from a mysterious social worker enquiring into Laura’s motivation in restoring and reopening the orphanage, Simón goes missing and events start to turn spooky…
After a somewhat uneven first half hour or so the film beds down and slowly unfurls its story, history and plot revealed layer by layer compounded with a series of very effective supernatural scenes. As always with these films there is a certain suspension of disbelief – I’m sorry but after the first ‘spooky’ incident I would exit the premises at Mach Three never to return – but this is pulled off by the film being just so goddamn creepy and atmospheric. There are quite a few big fucking jumps and one sequence toward the end which is absolutely outstanding in its building of tension and a sense of the uncanny. You’ve got to love seeing properly constructed scary movies like this at the cinema where the tension in the whole audience is palpable as characters tentatively wander down dimly lit corridors and then BANG everyone jumps out of their seats, popcorn flying as a loud crash reverberates around the auditorium. Heh, I love it….
I shouldn’t neglect to mention Geraldine Chaplin (yes, the daughter of Charlie) who gives a short but effective performance as a medium who at Laura’s request visits the site and in a trance reveals some of the terrible history of the institution. This is a new starring member of the genuinely scary, genuinely frightening film brotherhood, films with very little violence or gore which is an approach which always was and always will be infinity more effective in manipulating and affecting an audience. It nestles up with Robert Wise’s ‘The Haunting‘, Jack Clayton’s ‘The Innocents’ (which it shares many, many similarities), ‘The Shining’, and ‘The Others’ to name but a few.
Watch out for the ambulance.
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