Paranormal Inactivity...What's a Spirit to Do?

A big part of the horror film genre has always been ghosts and demons. These things have not ceased to scare the pants off of us because they tap into a part of us that may consider such things to be true. No, I’m not talking about Casper the friendly ghost and Bill Cosby’s Ghost Dad. I’m talking about the possibility that there may be a world outside our physical realm that cannot be explained by the natural order of things. Perhaps after a person dies, they continue to exist in a state that we cannot understand or explain until we go through that door on our deathbeds. Our personalities…our “I”s……continue to exist after our bodies cease to. It’s the great unknown. It’s scary. Many scientists doubt it…atheists scoff at it, and Hollywood has made money out of it. The supernatural has our attention, and the movie industry is eating it up.

As a child I remember films like Burnt Offerings and The House on Haunted Hill, which were very spooky. I used to stick more closely to monster movies but on occasion a ghost story would pop up and scare me half to death. The one that put a land mark on the screen back in my childhood years in the 70’s was The Amytiville Horror…that spook tale regarding a house out on Long Island by which the Lutz family, after only being there for a month, ran out of that house leaving all their belongings behind. Their story caught nationwide attention and a novel was also written along with the film. It also spawned a whole set of sequels that in my estimation, well, basically sucked but for what it was worth, Amytiville 2 The Possesion held my attention rather well in the 80’s. 

 
There was also of course Poltergeist…which was NOT an E.T. like film…. I know Steven Speilberg produced it and >>>>>>but they should have put such a film in the same slot as other horror flicks because it was straight up terrifying. A little girl being sucked into the spirit realm being held hostage by something called “The Beast”? I peed in my pants…. When the toy clown attacked the boy….forget it. Here’s some trivia for my life; When I was in junior high school, due to lack of teachers because of a snowstorm,they put the whole school in the auditorium and had us watch Poltergeist! Middle school kids! I don’t get it looking back. They wouldn’t even dare such a thing these days! That was the first time I actually saw the movie. Then they put it on TV a couple of years later. Scared my sister and I to death again!
Even to this day I would jump at supernatural horror films. Which brings me to the movie in question of this time….Paranormal Activity.

This film started on a very low budget back in 2007 by Oren Pali. Its about a young couple, Katie and Micah and their struggling with what turns out to be a demonic entity in the house. With the style of the Blair Witch Project, Micah buys a professional camera to document the disturbances plaguing them. As the movie progresses, it turns out that Katie has had this kind of experience before in her childhood along with her sister. Apparently this demon has returned to basically claim her, as the paranormal expert whom Katie requests help from explains. He also makes a referral to a demonologist who can help them, since his expertise is more on ghosts and that him being there would only make things worse. As the video continues to be shown to us, the occurances at night increase with frequency and intensity….and we are clinging to our seats with anticipation and the heebie geebies. It finally comes to a header at the end of the film where basically all hell breaks loose…in a literal kind of sense. 

 

This film was featured in small local theaters and film festivals for the following two years before Paramount Pictures finally bought it to feature it nationwide. With some tweaks, particularly with the ending, this film came down as one of the most frightening films to be put on the silver screen since The Exorcist…..yeah they actually said that. That was enough to peak my interest to see it. Needless to say my wife and I actually love the film. I couldn’t go to sleep quickly that night. Any bump from a pipe to the hum of the refrigerator made my hair stand on ends. That was clear enough for me to say that Paranormal Activity was a great horror movie. 

 

But then, guess what happened? The sequel bug kicked in for the sake of money and even though Paranormal Activity 2 was impressive in giving us more insight on Katie’s background and it actually was more of a prequel than a sequel, the other films….3 and 4 to be exact, were not impressive at all. It was basically the same thing as the first film but just recycled over and over again. Yes, I get the back story with the satanic coven and the girls, but something else had to give already and I was getting kind of sick of it. I have quite an imagination and if it were given to me to make and direct the next Paranormal Activity movie I would do the following…(Note: If Paramount or any other movie company takes this idea I’m about to share and uses it for a future film I deserve a cut….Consider this in writing, okay ) ? I think they should end the series with the paranormal investigator from the first film, his demonologist friend and a priest tracking down Katie and her nephew whom she stole in part 2, and cornering her into an exorcism that would rival Linda Blair’s fit. Of course the coven would be involved in trying to stop the exorcism to continue the family curse but this would be the main idea I would put to the film to finally put closure to the franchise. It would be different from the last few films which were redundant in their plots and not surprising anymore. It would bring about a new way of filming this which would be different from the other films and usher in a new wave of screams in the movie theater. There I said it. Remember….you take that idea….I get a cut .
Now having stated this, we just found out about a new Paranormal Activity film called The Marked Ones….look at this….


Okay, I have to admit, this does take a different approach to the last two films and my interest is there for it, but only watching it will make the final determination. I like the link to Katie and what happens to this young man. We have a different culture here….centered on a more black magic approach from a Latin culture perspective. I like that. Let’s see where this goes. Paranormal Activity, The Marked Ones comes out in January, making it the first film of the franchise to not be released in October. That may also be a sign that this one would be different but I don’t know.
Be sure to stay tuned. The Paranormal Activity series is clearly not over yet….I just really hope that they ended the way it started….scaring us to death.