Paranormal Activity - Page 3

A friend of mine saw the original ending of the film around April. The way it was described--sounded like a joke. Something about the cops coming in the house and shooting the girl while she's holding a knife and in a disoriented state.

Possessed, she kills the boyfriend downstairs off camera and then comes back upstairs and sits in the room for hours, the friend shows up later discovers the body (off camera) and calls the police. Police show up, come upstairs guns drawn and then shoot her when she attacks them.

That's the ending I remember.

She comes towards them with the knife and then the demon slams one of the guest bedroom doors, which makes the cops shoot her.

Anti-climatic, indeed.

Okay, saw it yesterday and was pretty impressed with PA. It isn't as good as Drag Me to Hell or Zombieland, but I'm very happy that this took the Saw franchise down a peg at the box office.

Just some random thoughts after reading this thread.

- I don't really have a problem with the final shot. It is mentioned during the movie that the camera is just pissing off the demon more. Makes sense that the demon would go after it once Micah is killed.

- I could have sworn that Micah threw the crucifix into the fireplace instead of the photo.

- The psychic's second appearance in the movie was unintentional comedy gold.

- Katie Featherston looks like Jenna Fischer with a larger rack. That's not a criticism or anything. It's just a wonderful fact of life.

There is clear shot of the girl in the photo burning in the fireplace. How is this getting confused with the cross? Yes, its a quick edit - Micah takes the cross out of her hand, says something like I'm done with this shit, and then it cuts to a shot of the photo in the fireplace - but it was a pretty clear view of the picture's edges burning down.

Is it possible that he threw both the photo and the cross into the fire? It's just that I saw the movie yesterday and thought I saw a cross in the fireplace.

Of course, this is all nitpicking since whatever Micah burned did absolutely nothing to solve the whole "demon is stalking my girlfriend" situation.

I saw this today:

http://www.theasylum.cc/product.php?id=168

First time an Asylumized movie cost more than the original?

Yeah well Micah didn't do shit in general to help his girlfriend. The events in the movie could have been avoided if Micah wasn't such a fucking tool.

I placed a hold on this moments ago at my local RedBox.

I have to say though, I'm kind of deeply troubled by the prospect of viewing it tonight. I got into work at 1 pm, yet didn't place it on hold till 3 30 pm. Why? Because every night since I learned the film was coming out on the 29th, I've grown increasingly worried it will so terrify me that I'll be left traumatized. My dreams are unfailingly vivid and intense, and when I have bad dreams, I can have very bad dreams, and last night I had a nightmare about this movie. Trick R Treat was hard enough to take a few months back, and with the hype and rumors that surrounded the release of this film, I'm a bit nervous the viewing experience will be far more than I can handle.

For the most part, I do not like horror films. I like some, but mostly I do not enjoy being scared. Except for Bioshock, I've never even played a horror videogame.

With so many calling PA "the scariest film of the decade", I'm now starting to think what they really mean is "Too scary for you"

I get off work at 6pm today, and then it's straight to the redbox at STOP AND SHOP to pick up the movie. I'll probably get home and smoke up and eat first, but then it's time for PA. If I am not too shaken afterwards, I might pop online to tell everyone my thoughts.

I won't lie though, I'm alot more worried about watching this than I was before TRICK R TREAT. Time will tell if that's a reasonable fear.

Stopped by the local Redbox last night and saw that Paranormal Activity was already there, so I rented it. Overall I thought it was ok. It didn't rattle me like hype said it would, and in fact the hype killed it a bit for me, but there were some really good moments in there. The one scene that's creepy is when Katie doesn't want to get out of bed and says that everything's fine in a disembodied voice. That and the ending were really creepy. I was watching it with a friend of mine, and he didn't notice the disembodied voice at first, so I rewound it. I'll have to see it again tonight before I return it.

1) Does all this discussion about specific scares and jumps fall into the category of "SPOILERS"?

2) I am kind of relieved to hear it's not that scary

Those are mild spoilers. Yeah, it wasn't that scary, but I was impressed with how some of those effects were achieved for $7,000.

I will return to offer my thoughts in full tomorrow, but all I can say right now is:

Wow. Should not have watched it. It's unreasonably terrifying and it touched on very deeply held fears of mine.

H Elp M Y comPUT ER iS Haunted. THERE i s aN evIl WIza RD inS I D E my HARD DRIVE. E nd me. There I s N O G o D

You're afraid of large-breasted chicks in tanktops?

Cannot wait.

I'm serious. I'm going to talk about it more tomorrow, but right now I'm unable to sleep after having watched PA. What I havn't mentioned here before is a specific dream I used to have. First off, I have all kinds of dreams. Funny dreams, complex dreams, epic dreams, inexplicable dreams, dreams where I'm a celebrity or in a movie plot, or acting in a movie. Many of my dream locations, characters, and plot points show up again and again in different dreams. One of these repeating dreams is much different than the others though

It started when I was five or six, and happened semi-regularly till I was ten or eleven or so. It's much, much less frequent now, thank god. I've only had it maybe 20-25 times in my life, but essentially I'd describe it as just about the worst nightmare possible.
I'll turn a corner, or open a door, or look up on a roof, and there is a figure, a black mass (just like Katie described in the film...) just standing there. It's a man made of shadows

I havn't had that dream in about two and a half years, but when she described what she saw during that scene with the psycic, my jaw pretty much hit the floor.

So basically this film hit at some of my deepest and earliest fears, and I found it very very effective.


PS Also, the main character shares my name. That is an unpleasent coincidence


EDIT: Just so you guy's don't think I'm a wimp for getting freaked out by this dream, I'll give you an example.

In my room back then, there was a chair by the head of my bed that my mom and dad would sit in to read to me while I went to sleep. One night after a particularly bad dream, my mom agreed to just sit in the chair till I went to sleep, because usually they'd leave after I got sleepy during whatever story they were reading out loud to me. So she stayed their while I went to bed. Then, later that night, (my room had kind of an orange glow from the night light) I --

and I swear to god it felt real to me, in a way few dreams have since

-- woke up. I was groggy, and completely unscared, because I'd kind of forgotten the dream and my mom helping me go to bed had kind of put those fears asside for the night. I was still kind of half awake, I look down the length of my bed, look at the nightlight, and then turn my head and look at the chair where my mom had been sitting when I'd gone to bed..


and the black shadow guy was sitting in the chair, just staring at me with this empty black face.


I then screamed and "really woke up" (I guess?)


For a six year old, that's pretty much the scariest shit possible.

By the way, Micah is just about the worst boyfriend in the history of cinema. Right from the beginning he keeps trying to encourage something that clearly upsets his girlfriend. Even if he thinks it's fake, that means he is trying to terrify Kate for no reason since he expects nothing actually paranormal to happen. WTF? Oh, and mocking her for her fear of spiders? Not cool. If you have a phobia of spiders, you cannot help it. It has nothing to do with maturity, it's just something that you cannot handle.

Micah tries to act like tha gallant boyfriend who kills the spider (to use a analogy for the ghost), when in fact he is the one inviting spiders into the home in the first place. He is, to put it bluntly, a douche bag

Better endings for the film:

Micah runs after Katie, we hear the attack sounds or whatever, and then we just hold the shot for 45 seconds or so, screen goes black. The text crawl informs us they were never seen again

Or....

Micah picks up the camera when he runs after her (like a douche), runs down the stairs, sees something unspeakably horrible (that we don't see), screams, drops the camera for the first time in the film. We hear more screaming, silence, and then the same text crawl

It's kind of funny how goofy both existing endings are. That did alot to help kill the tension for me, how silly it got in the last 30 seconds.

These movies where the camera is essentially an extra character the other cast members openly acknowledge and interact with have this way of drawing you in that a conventionally shot film doesn't. But, at the same time, I can't help but feel less like I'm watching footage of actual events than a theatrical equivalent of a reality TV show. Complete with people I find too irritating to want to spend time with.

It's not that the couple here are inherently more obnoxious than characters in any other horror movie. If this had been filmed in the traditional way, I'd be laughing at their antics instead of being annoyed ("Haha. That dumbass brought over a Ouija board. He's dead."). But maybe that's an argument that the pseudo-documentary approach works. Say if this had been made in the 80's, we would've had a demon's POV shot every time it walked up the stairs. Fuck that shit.

There's something in here, though, that works but there's also something I feel that's been overlooked by this and other movies with the same gimmick. I can't put my finger on it. I wanna say that the one camera following the action has as many limitations as it does benefits but that seems too obvious. There's an element missing that's bugging me and I don't think it's a rocking soundtrack or a happy ending. Somebody smarter than me can think of it. I'm going to eat a bagel.

So, I was thinking about this movie quite alot last night

A few brief thoughts, and then a comment:

1) I was reminded of the tag line for the new film FROZEN, and it occurred to me that a perfect tagline for PA would have been "What Jaws did for the water, PA does for your home". That might not have sold many tickets though, because the reality of that statement is terrifying. I am currently living alone in my dads house, which has 10 rooms, and creaks all the time. Up until viewing this film, that didn't bother me at all. Last night I found myself unable to leave my room I was so paralyzed by fear from the noises our baseboard heating was generating.

2) I came up with two simple methods that Katie and Mika could have tried that most likely would have saved them.

I call one the stick, and the other the carrot


I'll start with the carrot:

Actually, first, I'll state an assumption upon which my demon defense strategies are based.

The demon has emotions. It clearly felt aggravated or angry with Micah. It clearly got some kicks out of harassing them both.

Now, if it's not a sociopath (meaning, it can feel positive emotions and not just those ones I mentioned previously), I'd try this:

Try to engage the demon positively. Give it Micah's old camera. Perhaps it resents being filmed when it has no way to film stuff on it's own. Leave out some instructions for avid, and the computer on at night. Encourage it to direct it's energies into creative pursuits. It wants to impress Katie and Micah, clearly. When Micah goads it on with "That's all you got?", clearly the Demon takes that question to heart and makes an effort to show them, that no, it can be alot scarier.

So why not give the demon other ways to demonstrate it's skill? Leave out puzzles for it to complete on the kitchen floor. Start small, say, 24 pieces, then work up to larger ones. Since it's always listening, offer encouragement and praise when you see the completed puzzles in the morning. Perhaps work up to logic problems, and leave it the Ouija board to offer answers with.

Acknowledge it's presence and treat it like a member of the family. Talk to it during the day as it if were there, and set a place for it at meal times. Perhaps it's lonely and acting out, and the only way it feels important or cared for is when it gets negative attention.

Buy it a goldfish or a hamster, and leave the food out at night for him to take care of it. It might form an emotional bond, and this would give it some stake in the continued and stable existence of Micah and Kate's relationship. If it kills them off, it would most likely lose it's gold fish. Give it little rewards for nice actions (ie, not scaring them) by giving it little trinkets to add to the fish tank. Sunken ships, etc.

And now for The Stick....

Ok, so assuming you've determined the demon is a jerk, and you are not going to be able to control it with carrots, you need an alternative

If the demon can feel aggravated and angry at Micah for being a jerk, than it can feel annoyed.

Set up motion detectors all over the house, the bed room, everywhere. Hook them up to speakers. As soon as any motion is detected, have the speakers set to start blaring "Yackety Sax" or "The Chicken Dance". Any time a detector goes off in the bed room (from possessed Kate getting up to stare at Micah or whatever), Micah and Kate should have gotten up right out of bed and started doing the CHICKEN DANCE.

They should have given the ghost an absurd name like Gustav or something, and invited emo-20somethings over for wine-tastings and seances, and have people engage the demon in long, meandering pointless discussions on pop culture.

They should have covered the walls in TWILIGHT posters and fan art, and Edward Cullen card board cut outs. They'd all call the demon "Edward". And act as if it were the ghost of the character from the book

Or, whenever the Demon makes a little noise, or makes footsteps on the stairs etc, rather than cower in fear, Katie and Micah should have began hysterically screaming in an exaggerated fashion, at the slightest provocation


Actions like those would have made the whole "haunting" experience intolerable for the demon, and I'm pretty certain he'd just leave or move on to less annoying targets


Your thoughts?




Oh, and PS: When I mentioned my scary dream above,t here is actually alot more to it but I edited it out because I decided I didn't want to share it

^ um...what?

Princess Kate to movie discussion = Myers87 to Poster creation

I was discussing the methods I came up with last night to deal with a PA-like demon. Thinking about annoying it with Yackety Sax was pretty much the only thing that let me get to sleep after watching the movie.

Oh, also, I'd noticed some people complain about the open bedroom door. For me, this was one of the scariest parts of the film, along with the inky black that existed on the floor of teh bedroom. You'll recall I mentioned the black shadow guy from my dreams, well basically in every night time scene I was just staring at that door wondering if he could be standing right there. Very effective, as far as I'm concerned. Looking at a black hallway through an open door lets your imagination run wild

But what if you were haunted by the ghost of Benny Hill?

Then I'd try the carrot method, I wrote about above.

Saw it tonight at the local dollar theater.

For a movie with such long stretches that didn't work for me, I'm really impressed at how much the stuff that does work is sticking with me. Granted, living in an apartment building that used to be a funeral home isn't helping.

Aside from the Photoshop demon face, the ending fucked me up most. Primarily, Katie screaming, the demon screaming with her, and the sudden silence. Until we hear footsteps, that 10 seconds of silence is the most chilling 10 seconds of the year.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have 8 solid hours of not sleeping to do.

Out of the three possible endings, the theatrical is the best I think. The one of her returning to the bedroom and cutting her own throat was terrible.

While I don't want to see a "Katie Overload", I really hope she turns up in movies again. She's very cute and has a natural presence in front of the camera.

I was reading Katie and Micah were only paid $500 a piece to do the movie.

That's gotta burn.

Princess Kate I mean no disrespect by this but you seriously need to smoke some weed and chill the fuck out

Not too much weed though, you'd probably get super paranoid and try to burn your house down to kill the shadow people

In Blair Witch there was a scene where a woman was being interviewed by the main characters, and as she was talking about the legend her infant daughter kept trying to put her hand over her mouth. That was a little moment that was genuinely creepy in the theater, and I was expecting that kind of thing in Paranormal Activity. There was potential, especially in the scene where they find the old photo in the attic, and when the psychic feels the need to leave the house immediately, but those scenes kind of fell flat. I really think the actress, who had the much tougher role, struggled to get across a sense of terror in the quieter moments.

To stay on the Blair Witch comparison, for all the shit that film gets I think there was something meatier that was missing here. There was an actual story, of a naive and arrogant bunch of aspiring filmmakers coming to a rural area and underestimating the circumstances. Of getting lost and imperiled in a place that should have been safe and familiar. Paranormal Activity could have been about, for example, the effects childhood trauma often carries over to adult relationships, but the film felt pretty much subtext free.

The best possible ending would be somewhere in between: Micah getting thrown at the camera, Katie walks in, crouches over the corpse, smiles, then slits her own throat.

So disappointed the original ending was included on the blu-ray.

JC, not sure if you saw them, but what did you think of my proposed possible endings? (I listed two)

Anyone who gave a flying about this or Blair Witch had a chance to see LAKE MUNGO yet?

Much more chilling rather than balls out jumpy scares, but better than PA in my opinonion. It's an Aussie film done 'Mokumentary' style and I guarantee that if the ghostly chills don't get to you the very honest way it deals with death, grief and loss will

Unless you are a heartless fuck.

Saw this last night. MY biggest problem was definitely Micha being Movie character dumb, not real life dumb. Some of the things he did didn't make any kind of sense. "I'm not having some wack job demonoligist in my home, now excuse me while I read up on a bunch of books written by wack job demonologists" I get he was meant to be a macho douchebag but I didn't buy his character at all and it would suck me out of the movie every time he'd escalate his stupidity. "haha demon, I've caught you on tape opening a door and thusly I banish you forever"


Also I definitely saw him through the cross in the fire.

I watched this last night with my buddy in our darkened apartment and honestly it scared the hell out of me. I am a horror nerd but I dunno this one just freaked my shit out. The open door in the bedroom was effective, i just kept staring down that hallway expecting something to be there or appear or whatever. That scream at the end was just blood curdling. I honestly didnt even think Micah was so bad, seriously he was acting a bit dumb but it seemed genuinely like a relationship that had been going on for 3 years. Anyway the most effective horror film for me in a while

Watched this last weekend in the cheap seats. It freaked me right the fuck out. The scary face at the end wasn't a ruiner for me, but yeah, they could have left it at her looking over his body and smiling and that would have been sufficiently creepy as an ending.

There were several shots that drew me right in and held me there. Like when she gets possessed that first time and goes outside and has no idea why she is there and Micah is running around with the camera trying to find out where she's at. Ditto finding the pic in the attic. I don't know if it was the contrast of the dark little pic in the middle of all of that insulation, but that genuinely creeped me out. When she gets dragged out of bed, and the dread that last night when she says they should stay and you just KNOW she's possessed were also scary!!

I sort of groaned at the Oijia Board lighting on fire. If that happened in my house and I caught it on film, I would have run straight to a church, demaned sanctuary, and had the priests put me on 24-hour-a-day demon watch. It just seemed like they didn't see the thing light on fire. Not to mention how douchey it was for Micah to bring one into the house. Speaking of the board, was anyone able to make sense of Micah's notes as to what he thought the board actually said before it lit on fire?

Overall, very well worth the cheap sieat price of admission ($2.75). The crowd was absolutely into it and the theatre was PACKED.

Yes, the cross went in the fire. You can see it on the DVD

This movie was fucking hilarious. I can't imagine anyone being remotely frightened or spooked by anything in it. Holy crap how awful.

I wouldn't go as far as saying it was hilarious, it was however very boring.

One thing that really really bothered me was that I could tell something was going to happen because the gain was raised on the sound. It blew most of the scares for me.

There were alot of disappointments I had with this film, however I'm impressed that it gathered such a huge following.

Definitely gotta give it that.

Yeah, this was the film's biggest problem: both characters, but especially Micah, doing dumb shit that was obviously done simply to keep them without help. Your girlfriend is dragged out of bed by an invisible entity that's been haunting her for decades - tell me your first action, atheist or true believer, isn't going to be call a Catholic priest who knows how to exorcise. Micah's repeated assertion "calling them makes it worse" worked, maybe, the first time....but as things escalated, he just became a huge, unlikable douche serving as a plot machine. The fact that SHE didn't make such a call - when at school, away from the douche's influence - also just doesn't ring true.

It's the photograph he found in the attic.

I liked it - and the whole "no one carries a videocam around like that" part didn't bother me, since we wouldn't have a movie that way - and I agree with Devin that this is a "watch at home, at night, with the sound way up and lights out" flick. But the couple's stupidity almost ruins it.

However, I also agree that Katie Featherston is extremely easy on the eyes, and I agree that she's way more attractive that starving starlets with no curves or meat on their bones. I was frankly almost distracted by her world class rack - but it certainly helped make up for Micah's ludicrous and dumb behavior.

I agree that the logic is wobbly, the demonologist is THE WORST, Micah is annoying, and all the endings are lame, but despite all that, I was legitimately spooked. When the time-lapse counter slows down to real time during the nighttime scenes, you KNOW something is going down. The whole home video/Blair Witch/steady escalation/hide-the-monster conceit just works for me.

And yes, that 10 seconds after you hear her come up the stairs and stop at the landing had me braced in my seat with my eyes watering. I didn't see it home alone with the lights off, but I did see it alone, at the theater, and quite baked, which I guess is about the same

For all the film's faults (and there aren't that many), it is, quite simply, the creepiest movie I have ever seen.

As a lifelong horror fan, and well into my 30s, I still lost a good deal of sleep for a week and change after seeing this in the theater. I can't remember the last time any horror film did that to me. I think it was almost custom-made to hit every one of my most primal fears.

Very much agree. And even in this photo, I dislike Micah!

What the hell? Twice now I started watching and twice I've stopped it not even half an hour in. Hype probably just killed this one for me and it's seriously the first time this has ever happened with a movie. Well, hype and Micah being an unlikable douchebag. I'll probably return it and give it another try a couple of months from now.

I didn't see what the big deal was about Micah being annoying. Yes, he was very douchey and annoying, but somehow that didn't get in the way of the movie for me. I just felt he was part of the movie and his character brought a very flawed perspective to the whole thing.

And Katie Featherstone's rack was very distracting. She's gorgeous.

It's distracting because it's patently obvious he's making stupid choices and decisions solely for the plot, rather than being a believable reaction to the events in the house. Again: his girlfriend was dragged bodily out of bed to another room, kicking and screaming, by a hostile invisible entity. And he keeps insisting that a demonologist's going to make it worse and that he'll handle it? And I couldn't swallow that Katie wouldn't have said "Fuck it," and called on her own.

Oh, yeah.