Paranormal Activity | Law Abiding Citizen | The Time Traveller's Wife

“That´s it?” was my immediate reaction as Paranormal Activity ended and, after a brief copyright notice (no credits), the screen went black. Kudos to writer/director Oren Peli for turning this unpretentious home video footage into an entirely watchable film, the folks at DreamWorks for discovering it, and the Paramount marketing team for turning it into a must-see event. But really – is that all there is? Considering the hype machine that preceded the release of Paranormal Activity, disappointment was inevitable. The film has been sold as the scariest movie ever made, with trailers showcasing audiences jumping in their seats and not a single frame of the actual movie. SoIs it scary? Nah, not really. It´s thoroughly creepy though, and there are a couple boo! moments that might catch you off guard. The film begins by thanking the families of Micah and Katie; what we´re about to see is purported to be real, “found footage” of the couple, who we presume from this opening are no longer with us. It´s the same setup as The Blair Witch Project, and the similarities don´t end there. That seems about right; Paranormal Activity opens ten years after Blair Witch; I´m not sure the moviegoing public could take more than one of these per decade. Micah (Micah Sloat) has just purchased a new video camera; the film begins as he turns it on for the first time. He´s bought the camera because his girlfriend Katie (Katie Featherston) has been recently experiencing the titular activity and he wants to attempt to document the evidence. She´s had encounters with a ghost (or ghosts) since she was a child: an apparition by her bed as she sleeps, she can feel it breathing on her neck. But she can´t just leave their house, as an expert (Mark Fredrichs) explains: the demon will follow her wherever she goes. Still, we expect her to try – or to take some kind of action – but she seems to want to get on with her life. The majority of the film is a collection of scenes of ghostly doings, mostly shot at night, by a static camera as Micah and Katie sleep. This is intercut with daytime scenes of exposition, as the couple watch video from the previous nights, talk about what to do, and argue. There´s a lot of arguing, as Micah, who is never really convinced despite his first-hand experiences, begins to taunt the demon. The film relies on its scare scenes, which I won´t spoil. It´s built on a presumption that what we´re seeing is real, or really happened – and while we´re fully aware this is not the case – there isn´t a single element in the film (well, maybe one at the end) that challenges this presumption. No credits, no scenes that appear professionally filmed, and the filmmakers aren´t trying to fool us with a shaky-cam or hyper-editing either: like Blair Witch, this is the real deal, shot for around $10,000 over the course of a week. But yeah: that´s it? There´s enough story here for a ten minute YouTube video. Drawn out over 90 minutes, boredom soon replaces suspense. Interest in the characters is minimal. At its best, Paranormal Activity works on the level of a documentary short subject, or a clip from Unsolved Mysterious; these things we´re seeing, they might really exist. As a feature, however, we´re left wanting. It is creepy and unsettling, and it´s a clear success story for those involved (I have a feeling the story behind the film would make a better movie than the film itself), but I´m at a loss how to rate or recommend it. The tacky ending veers me towards the negative. The best thing about The Blair Witch Project was not the film itself, but the mythology that surrounded it: the witch and her legend and all that creativity that surrounded the marketing. There´s precious little of that surrounding Paranormal Activity and its nameless, arbitrary demon – there´s just not enough story, backstory or otherwise, in the film itself to make that possible. It´s a creepy little collection of ghostly scenes and a whole lotta hype.

Law Abiding Citizen sits firmly in the ‘good thriller´ category. By the end, it has turned completely implausible, and on top of that, it isn´t even satisfying on an emotional level. But for the previous 100 minutes, director F. Gary Gray and writer Kurt Wimmer have provided a taut, suspenseful thriller that delivers levels of moral complexity to boot. By the end, they´ve painted themselves into a corner – I realize now that no explanation could have satisfied. But it´s fun watching them paint.

The Time Traveler´s Wife opens with a young Henry DeTamble riding in the back seat of a car, his mother driving. There´s what appears to be an accident, but Henry suddenly finds himself back at home, watching another version of himself with mom and dad. Moments later, he´s back at the scene of the accident, his mother dead in a fiery inferno. He´s comforted by an older version of himself (played by Eric Bana), who wraps the young time traveler in a blanket (Henry can´t take his clothes with him when he travels – a nice thought, but so much screentime is dedicated to him scrambling in search of clothing that I wish they left it out. Time travel is a big jump to accept, I think we could take some clothing too)

It´s when you consider the time travel that things start to fall apart. When Henry travels, he does so in progressive fashion (he never goes back further in time than he has before), for no real reason other than it would screw with the plot if he did (towards the end, this forward progression is abandoned and he travels forward and back in time without much rhyme or reason – and Henry has the opportunity to screw with the plot, but never does.) All this time travel, and the past and future are always perfectly flush, everything happens as it should; you might think that Henry could change the future by his actions in the past (and logically, he should be able to, right?) but no – we progress as if fate has sealed the timeline.