Paranormal Activity

The 2007 thriller Paranormal activity runs for 86 minutes and was released in 2009 in the UK.

This film is about a women who has been haunted by a demon since she was little and now she has moved in to a house with her partner. They are then increasing disturbed by a demonic presence.

Written and directed by: Oren Peli

Starring: Katie Featherstone (Katie) and Micah Sloat (Micah)

 Produced by: Jason Blum and Steven Schneider

The budget of this film was an estimated $15000. On the opening week it grossed $77873 from only 12 screens in USA. To the 21st January 2010 they grossed $193,355,800 worldwide.

The story shows a sceptic who after a while starts to believe in the demons who are disturbing him and his partner. The film shows takes in the night and day. It is filmed at night to show all the action and to build the suspense but it also filmed in the day to break up the suspense. The whole film is recorded using a regular film camera that any one of the public would use for their home videos. This and the general day to day activities of the characters with friends coming over makes the film seem realistic and believable as it also makes the viewers realise that we can do it our self.

The story becomes even more believable when experts and internet pages are used to describe what happened to other people in similar circumstances to Micah and Katie.

Tension and suspense are built up by the use of simple sounds that in the circumstances of the film become increasingly scary. The selective use of sound volume also makes the sounds and the visuals seem scary and jumpy.  There is no use of non-diegetic sounds in the whole film.

Effective use of light and dark puts attention on some objects or people to focus attention and to also avoid attention in some cases. An example of this is when the bed is lighted but all the surroundings are in dark. This draws the attention of the viewer to the bed but when shadows and movements are produced in the dark areas our attention is then drawn to that.

All this then builds to an inevitable climax.