Starting off deceptively simply, Paranormal Activity builds up tension and suspense to the point that a falling popcorn box will make you jump out of your seat.
Framed as found footage filmed by a couple in their own home, the film features shaky hand-held camera-work mixed with some static tripod work.
The footage is meant to be a document of what happens when the couple start investigating some scary and unusual activity in the house.
Micah Sloat starts lugging a camera around to film his fiancée Katie (played by Katie Featherston) being haunted by some sort of escalating weirdness around the house.
Things that go bump in the night take up the challenge and soon it's Ouija boards, flying lamps and sleepwalking.
Sloat and Featherston are very natural, neither hamming it up as is the wont of actors in a "real" situation. This helps you buy into the idea that it's very, very real.
The last few frames are all the more effective for the way the film ends, an assertion from Paramount that they own the footage simply fades to black without the usual rolling credits.
Working off the less is more premise there's more suggestion than anything else, which totally works in the film's favour.
Instead of showing the scary something it lets you create it for yourself and what you come up with is pretty frightening.
Paranormal Activity achieves its one objective - to scare you through suspense - only if you give yourself over to the process.
When you stop thinking of it as a film and pretend it's a documentary it will scare the heck out of you.
If you liked... Blair Witch Project... this is even better.
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