Paranormal Entity

Before we start, let me make myself clear - I'm talking about the film Paranormal Entity, rather than the film Paranormal Activity. If you want my thoughts on the latter, then head here. But make no mistake about it, there are similarities between the two films. In fact, Paranormal Entity is a mockbuster of its much more rewarding and successful predecessor. In other words, it is pretty much the same as its predecessor, but 78% more shitty.

It is a bit like going to the local market and picking up a cheap "designer" watch - a Bolex rather than a Rolex. At first, the two things look very similar and sound very similar. Then your Bolex starts running slow. Really slow. You go by your Bolex, so you're a half hour late for work, yet an hour late going home. Furthermore, the second hand to your Bolex has fallen off and is rattling around within the watch, further hindering an already torturously crap piece of mechanics. Then, to really make things worse, the silver of your Bolex is already started to rub off, leaving an murky iron color underneath. And worse, the silver paint is giving you an odd rash on your wrist. Plus, all of your work colleagues have realised that you are wearing a Bolex, rather than a Rolex, and are all taking the piss as a result.

Paranormal Entity (PE from now on) is like that, only much, much more boring. Plus, they pretty much tell you exactly what is going to happen in this film with the opening caption. It is one thing to imply that something bad is going to happen over the course of your film. It is another to spell out the ultimate fate of your characters just seconds after your viewers have met them for the first time.

PE's premise is exactly the same as Paranormal Activity - people try to catch a spooky presence on camera. Which leads to lots of torturous explanations of why often deeply traumatic events are being filmed. The difference here is that there is stuff that just wouldn't be committed to camera in the first place, let alone added into a film by the family to prove a relative's innocence. For example, no-one would film their mother mournfully cradling the tie of their dead husband/the cameraman's father in an attempt to film a ghost. No mourning family member would then add it to their film.

Of course, in all horror movies, people are dumb, but in this film they appear to be a special kind of dumb. The mother and sister leave their brother alone in the house. Also, they don't seem to think to review the footage the brother has been filming until halfway through the film - even though the footage would help to explain what the hell is going on. And I ended up like that character in Blink who Sally Sparrow overhears - the one shouting at the screen "just call the police! Why doesn't anyone in these films just call the police?"

Plus, the family behave in really odd, unrealistic ways. We're led to believe that the sister sleeps in her bra - just so the camera can get a couple of underwear shots of her. The son lays traps for the paranormal entity by setting up trip wires with bells on them at floor level - even though the entity was, on the previous evening, walking on the ceiling. And the family just doesn't communicate with each other. No-one stops to say "let's compare notes" or "what do you think is going on here?" or even "why don't we sell some of these numerous video cameras that we're filming everything with and piss off on a holiday somewhere?"

But, as I say, people in horror movies are dumb, just as people in comedies tend to be arseholes in need of redemption/a shag/both. That alone is not enough to sink a film. What does sink a horror, though, is when the shocks just aren't scary. This film is a rip-off of Paranormal Activity - so we expect the sort of things that happened in that film to happen in this one. However, you need to add a twist to the events - if they are simply the sodding same, they it becomes a bit tedious. If your shock moment is the mother character standing behind the door after 75 minutes of the film, you've got a problem. That is only scary if you are the person it is happening to. Rather than if you've watched a tedious prick running all over the house before finding her behind a door.

And what is the death knell for any movie is if the pace is all over the place. And in this film, it really is. It manages to make 90 minutes seem roughly three times that amount of time. It spends an inordinate amount of time showing us the brother setting up ghost traps in his home (in Paranormal Activity, that was a brief set-up for a great later scare). However, the climax of the film is over in about a minute. After an utterly spurious explanation of what the entity is (a rapey ghost, in case you're interested) we then get to see the prof dead and the sister dead - with her tits out. That's something that I guess the filmmaker meant to be titillating, but is rather undermined by the fact that it is the naked corpse of a woman who has been raped and killed by a ghost. Sure, you can argue that the makers of PE had no money to spend on the climax of the film. But nor did the makers of Paranormal Activity. The difference is that the makers of the latter film provoked the viewer's imagination, before hinting at what had happened. The makers of PE simply ripped off The Blair Witch Project, and ended the whole film in such a way that leads to believe that they ran out of time, money, and the ability to care about the ending.

The truth is that Paranormal Activity is a very derivative film - but one that is done well. PE is a crude copy of a derivative film, and it is done really, really badly. Of course, you can argue that this is what mockbuster filmmakers do. It is simply about making money, not about creating anything of any artistic worth whatsoever. The problem is that if you make a good mockbuster, then you can create a franchise that makes millions. If you make PE, you simply make a film that insults your viewers.