For some inexplicable reason I've been grabbed by an urge to watch the entire 'Paranormal Activity' series. I used to despise found footage flicks but recently I've mellowed on them a bit as I find their slight 'throwaway' quality means I can watch without expectations, and there is a rough abrasiveness to some of them that I do quite like. Anyway, here is part one of my findings...
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY - First of the bunch at least uses the FF format with a bit of flair. The minimal set-up - one house, a couple and a handful of incidental characters - makes for an increasingly claustrophobic atmosphere as a woman at the centre of some odd goings on starts to panic about demonic possession. It's to PA's benefit that they don't overdo it with the horror stuff, relying on minimal visuals, sound, and the characters' horrified reactions over special effects. A few scenes - the discovery of a burned photograph in a loft, Katie's frequent sleepwalking - are genuinely eerie. There aren't all that many jump scares, and the gathering unease is helped along by two strong performances that cement the feeling of a shadow spreading itself beneath the shallows of the everyday. Quite liked overall, solid start.
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 - Continues the formula of simmering vibes plus the odd jump scare (I'm glad it's not totally jump scare reliant, which sometimes seems to be the default mode of many a found footage flick and gives me a good excuse not to like them). A new family, a new house - this time events centre on the sister of Katie from the first in the series, and the two films are linked through some deft orchestration that, as well as being impressively layered, provides quite a bleak reason for that burned photo in the loft. Wall mounted security cameras are the excuse for found footage here; there's something about the wide-angled perspective thing that I find quite oppressive and a bit claustrophobic, so I quite enjoyed the strained atmos between the expected banging and bits where objects appear oh so spookily out of place. As with number one, a lot of the creep factor just comes from well-performed, unforced-seeming interactions between people who feel a sense of something going wrong in the background. More diversions, more characters and slight sense of diminishing returns slipping in might explain why it lacks the minimalist energy of the first, but still an alright watch.
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 - Off to the eighties as we delve into the backstory behind Katie's family and their issues with the paranormal. The film stumbles in not having era-specific found footage - it all looks like it was filmed in HD and not an appropriately scummy VHS cam of the kind that would make an appearance in, well, VHS ('85). Aside from that, it's a case of rinse and repeat as we're served up more sinister rumblings and door slammings, either of which might be interrupted at any moment by something falling off a shelf. Hey, I'm not knocking the minimalist approach, it's better than crap CGI demons, and there is one lovely bona fide visual horror 'gag' involving a sheet ghost. One thing I've noticed and find quite amusing about found footage movies, at least the non-totally sloppy ones, is that for certain scenes to work, quite a lot of art and contrivance goes into making sure there's a camera in the right place at the right moment. The more they rig it to make narrative sense, the more it feels fabricated and a bit silly - see the opportunistic use of a lazy Susan here.
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