Paranormal Activity (2007)

Usually scary films don’t scare me for long as I think I maintain an emotional disconnect just to protect myself from being genuinely freaked out. Some are just horrible – Wolf Creek (2005) put ideas and images into my head that I wish I could unsee – and some get let down by the ending where the horror unmasked is less frightening than my imagination promised – Hereditary (2018) is an example of this .

I watched Paranormal Activity one night at home with my partner and he, as often happens, got tired and went to bed before the end. The story is about a young couple who move into a new house where there is a demonic presence. It’s shown only through footage from a camera set up in their bedroom and so there is a lot of suspense created by what happens outside of the room that we can’t see but also what happens while they are asleep that we can see.

It’s one of the few movies that, when it ended, I was scared to walk around my quiet, dark house. I experienced something similar when I watched The Blair Witch Project (1999) for the first time recently. It had the same video camera footage technique and an evil that was potentially demonic and those final scenes really stuck with me. I can see how Paranormal Activity might have been influenced by it (and the long term impact it has had on the horror genre).

What’s the scariest film you’ve seen, particularly as an adult?

Posted as part of the 30-Day Fillums Challenge, created by me. If you want to see what’s coming up, have a look at my post here and feel free to join in by commenting each day with your own choice.

Coming Next: Day 10: Your favourite Australian film