When i first watch this film it didn't scare me as such it freaked me out more with a cold chill, because the film makes of this film don't realise how close this is to a true haunting in real life,this is one of the best films of it film genre in documentary style filming to scare audiences around the world.
Paranormal
Activity is a 2007 American supernatural horror film written and
directed by Oren Peli.The film centers on
a young couple, Katie and Micah, who are haunted by a supernatural presence in
their home. It is presented in the style of "found footage", from cameras set up by
the couple in an attempt to photograph what is haunting them.
Originally developed
as an independent
feature and given film festival screenings in 2007, the film was acquired by
Paramount
Pictures and modified, particularly with a new ending. It was given a
limited U.S. release on September 25, 2009, and then a nationwide release on
October 16, 2009. The film earned nearly $108 million at the U.S. box office and
$194 million worldwide.
Paramount/DreamWorks acquired the U.S. rights for $350,000. It is the most
profitable film ever made, based on return on investment, although such
figures are difficult to verify independently as this is likely
to exclude marketing costs.
Plot
In September 2006,
Katie (played by Katie Featherston) and her boyfriend, Micah
(Micah Sloat), are a young couple who recently moved into a two-story tract house in suburban San Diego, California. Katie claims that
an "evil" presence has haunted her since childhood and believes that it has
followed her to their new home. Each night, Micah mounts a Sony HDR-FX1 on a tripod in
their bedroom to record any paranormal activity that might occur while they
sleep, in the hopes of solving the problem himself. The first night, the only
thing they catch are footstep noises and the sound of keys dropping, which they
find on the floor downstairs the next day. Katie hires a psychic, Dr. Fredrichs
(Mark Fredrichs), who assesses that she is being haunted not by a ghost, but by
a demon. He says the demon feeds off
negative energy, and its intent is to haunt and torment Katie no matter where
she goes. He advises them not to taunt or communicate with the demon, and to
contact demonologist Dr. Johann
Averies for help. Though Katie seems interested and engaged in the situation,
Micah does not take it seriously.
The camera captures
several supernatural
phenomena which remain minor at first, such as a light turning on and off in the
hallway during the second night, and the bedroom door moving by itself during
the third night. During the fifth night however, Katie wakes up from a nightmare
and it is revealed that something was whispering to her in her sleep according
to the paranormal psychic. Micah begins to taunt the demon and the phenomena
worsen; During the tenth night, the demon crawls through the covers and when
Katie is woken up by it she hears growling in the hallway. She investigates but
it runs downstairs. During the thirteenth night, they are awoken by a
supernatural screech and a loud thud. They go downstairs to investigate and find
the chandelier moving by itself. During the fifteenth night, Katie awakens and
spends several hours standing by the bed staring at Micah while he sleeps,
before going outside to sit on the backyard swing. Micah awakens by noises in
the hallway and tries to convince Katie to come inside but she refuses. When
Micah goes inside to get her a blanket, he finds the TV turned on in the bedroom
and the kitchen sink tap on and is then startled by Katie, who followed him
inside but says that he woke her up. Katie remembers nothing the next day.
Katie, already
irritated by Micah's flippant response to the situation, becomes irate when
Micah brings home a Ouija board despite Dr. Fredrichs' warnings. The
two go out of the house that evening, leaving the Ouija board in the living
room. The curtains and plants start to blow around and the Ouija board's planchette moves on its own. A
small fire erupts on the board, but it extinguishes itself before they get home.
It seems that the board has left them an unrecognizable and unreadable message.
During the sixteenth night, the bed tips over. During the seventeenth night,
Micah sprinkles talcum powder in the hallway and when the couple
is awoken by noises, they find non-human footprints leading to the bedroom from
the attic. In the attic, Micah finds a burnt photograph of a young Katie, which
was previously thought to have been destroyed in an unexplained house fire.
The next night, a
light turns on and off and the bedroom door slams shut. Loud banging is heard,
as something is apparently trying to get in. They discover that the glass over a
photo of them has been smashed, with Micah's image scratched. Dr. Averies is
abroad when Micah finally agrees to invite him, so Dr. Fredrichs comes instead.
Upon his arrival, Dr. Fredrichs immediately has a sense of dread. He
apologetically leaves despite their pleas for his help, stating that his
presence is only making the demon angry. During the nineteenth night, a shadow
moves across the bedroom door. Katie is pulled out of the bedroom by an unknown
force during the twentieth night. Stressed and exhausted, the couple decide to
go to a hotel. Micah finds Katie gripping a cross so tightly that it bloodies her palm. Micah, angry
at the situation, burns the cross and the picture found in the attic. Just as he
is set to leave, Katie insists that they will be okay now, her voice flat, but
with the hint of another voice sounding in tandem with her own.
The next night Katie comes out of bed and stands beside it staring at Micah
for approximately two hours and then walks downstairs. After a moment of
silence, Katie screams Micah's name, waking Micah who rushes to her. The camera
records Katie screaming incessantly. Then Katie's screaming stops and a brief
silence is followed by the sound of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. After
another brief silence, Micah's body is violently hurled at the camera, knocking
it over sideways and revealing Katie standing in the doorway. She then slowly
walks into the room, her clothing soaked with blood. Crouching over his body,
she sniffs Micah (who has evidently been murdered) and then slowly looks up at
the camera with a sly smile. As she lunges toward the camera, her face takes on
a demonic appearance just as the scene cuts to black. An epilogue text states
that Micah's body was discovered by the police on October 11, 2006, and that
Katie's whereabouts remain unknown.
Alternate endings
In its original
version, the film featured a different ending, in which Katie was seen getting
killed, contrarily to her unknown fate featured in the theatrical version. In
this version, after going downstairs on the final night and waking Micah with a
scream, only Katie is shown returning to the bedroom, holding a large bloody
kitchen knife, her shirt bloodied. She sits beside the bed, holding the knife
and rocking herself, until about 2 p.m. the next day, when her friend Amber
calls and leaves a message expressing her concern. At about 9:20 p.m. that
night, Katie is still sitting and rocking by the bed, and Amber can be heard
entering the house. During this short period, Katie stops rocking, but when
Amber screams (evidently after finding Micah's body) and runs out of the house,
she resumes her motion. Half an hour later, just after 9:50 p.m., police enter
the home and discover Micah's body as well. As they are checking Micah for vital
signs, a light turns on in the bedroom down the hallway, but before the police
see it, the light turns off again. They discover Katie, still sitting beside the
bed with the knife. As they call to her, she wakes from her catatonic state and
seems confused. As she approaches them, knife in hand, calling Micah, they ask
her to drop the weapon. Suddenly the bedroom door behind the police officers
slams shut, startling them and causing them to shoot Katie, who collapses on the
floor. The police then call dispatch and check the bedroom at the end of the
hall, but find nothing. They discover the video camera, still running. A
dedication to and a picture of Katie and Micah are then shown. The original
ending for the film was available for a time for viewing on the Internet before
Paramount exerted a claim of copyright on the material.
Once Paramount
acquired the film, two new endings were developed for the film, one of them
being the one seen in theaters. The scrapped ending was shown at only one public
viewing and was later offered as an alternate ending on the DVD and Blu-ray
releases of the film.In
this ending, Katie gets out of bed and stands staring at Micah, as she did in
the theatrical ending, except she does not move to Micah's side of the bed.
About three hours pass, then she finally goes downstairs. She lets out a
blood-curdling scream, which wakes Micah up and he runs downstairs. The
screaming continues, and the sounds of a struggle are heard before the noises
abruptly stop. There is silence for a short while before loud footsteps are
heard on the stairs. Katie then walks into the bedroom, Micah's blood covering
her shirt, with a knife in her hand. She closes and locks the bedroom door,
before walking up to the camera, standing idle briefly. She then lifts the knife
and slits her own throat, then falls to the floor, dead.
Cast
( Beautiful ) Katie
Featherston as Katie
Micah Sloat as Micah
Amber Armstrong as Amber
Mark Fredrichs as Dr. Fredrichs (psychic)
Ashley
Palmer as Diane (girl on the Internet
Production
First-time director Oren Peli had been afraid of ghosts
his entire life, even fearing the comedy film Ghostbusters, but intended to channel that
fear into something positive and productive.Peli took
a year to prepare his own house for shooting, going so far as to repaint the
walls, add furniture, put in a carpet, and build a stairwell, in Rancho Peñasquitos.
In this time, he also did extensive research into paranormal phenomena and
demonology, stating, "We wanted to be as truthful as we could be." The reason
for making the supernatural entity in the story a demon was a result of the
research pointing to the most malevolent and violent entities being
"demons". The
phenomena in the film take place largely at night—the vulnerability of being
asleep, Peli reasoned, taps into a human being's most primal fear, stating, "If
something is lurking in your home there's not much you can do about it."
Attempting to focus on
believability rather than action and gore, Peli chose to shoot the picture with
a home video camera. In deciding on a more raw and stationary format (the camera
was almost always sitting on a tripod or something else) and eliminating the
need for a camera crew, a "higher degree of plausibility" was created for the
audience as they were "more invested in the story and the characters".Peli
says that the dialogue was "natural" because there was no real script. Instead,
the actors were given outlines of the story and situations to improvise, a
technique known as "retroscripting" used in the making of The Blair
Witch Project. In
casting the movie, Peli auditioned "a few hundred people" before finally meeting
Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat. He originally auditioned them individually
and later called them back to audition together. Peli was impressed with the
chemistry between the actors, saying, "If you saw the [audition] footage, you
would've thought they had known each other for years.During a
guest appearance on The Jay Leno
Show on November 3, 2009, Sloat and Featherston explained they each saw
the casting call on LACasting.
Featherston noted they were originally paid $500 for their work.
The film was shot out
of sequence due to Peli's self-imposed seven day shooting schedule, though
Peli would have preferred the story unfold for the actors as he had envisioned
it. Sloat, who controlled the camera for a good deal of the film, was a former
cameraman at his university's TV station. "It was a very intense week", Peli
recalled, stating that the film would be shot day and night, edited at the same
time, and would have the visual effects applied to it as the acting footage was
being finalized.
The film was screened
at 2007's Screamfest Horror Film
Festival, where it impressed an assistant at the Creative
Artists Agency, Kirill
Baru, so much that CAA signed on to represent Peli. Attempting to find a
distributor for the film and/or directing work for Peli, the agency sent out
DVDs of the movie to as many people in the industry as they could, and it was
eventually seen by Miramax
Films Senior Executive Jason Blum, who thought it had potential. He worked
with Peli to re-edit the film and submitted it to the Sundance Film
Festival, but it was rejected. The DVD also impressed DreamWorks executives Adam Goodman, Stacey Snider,
and finally Steven
Spielberg, who cut a deal with Blum and Peli.
DreamWorks' plan was
to remake the film with a bigger budget and with Peli directing, and only to
include the original version as an extra when the DVD was eventually released.
"They didn't know what to do with [the original]", said Blum; they just wanted
to be "in business" with Peli. Blum and
Peli agreed, but stipulated a test screening of the original film before going
ahead with the remake, believing it would be well received by a theatrical
audience.
During the screening,
people began walking out; Goodman thought the film was bombing, until he
learned that the viewers were actually leaving because they were so frightened.
He then realized a remake was unwise. Paramount
Pictures, which acquired DreamWorks in 2005, bought the domestic rights to
the film, and international rights to any sequels, for $350,000 USD.When the film was
taken in by Paramount Pictures, several changes were
made. Some scenes were cut, others added, and the original ending was scrapped,
with two new endings being shot. The ending
shown in theaters during the film's worldwide release is the only one of the
three to feature visual
effects, and it differs from the endings previously seen at the Screamfest
and Burbank screenings. The theatrical
release was delayed indefinitely because Paramount had put all DreamWorks
productions on hold. Meanwhile, a screening for international buyers resulted in
the sale of international rights in 52 countries.Only after
Goodman became production chief at Paramount in June 2009 did the film finally
get slated for a fall release.
Release
Paranormal
Activity premiered at Screamfest Film Festival in
North America on October 14, 2007, was shown at the Slamdance
Film Festival on January 18, 2008, and screened at the 36th Annual Telluride
Film Festival on September 6, 2009.
The version with the
new ending, made after Paramount acquired the film, had screenings on September
25, 2009 in 13 college towns across the United States. On his
website, director Oren Peli invited internet users to "demand" where the film
went next by voting on eventful.com. This was the first
time a major motion picture studio used the service to virally market a
film.Twelve of the 13
venues sold out. On
September 28, Paramount issued a press release on Peli's website, announcing
openings in 20 other markets on Friday, October 2, including large-market cities
such as New York and Chicago.
On October 3, it was
reported that a total of 33 screenings in all 20 markets sold out and that the
movie had made $500,000 domestically. A day later, Paramount announced that the
film would have a full limited release in 40 markets, playing at all
hours (including after-midnight showings). On October 6, Paramount announced
that the movie would be released nationwide if the film got 1,000,000 "demands"
on eventful.com. The full limited release of the film started on Friday, October
9. On October 10 the
Eventful.com counter hit over 1,000,000 requests.Paramount
announced soon after that the film would get a wide domestic release on Friday, October 16 and
then expand to more theaters on the 23rd. By November, it
was showing in locales worldwide.
Reviews
The film received
positive critical reception upon release. Based on 184 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the
film has an overall approval 'certified fresh' rating from critics of 82%. Movie critics James
Berardinelli and Roger
Ebert each awarded it 3.5 stars out of a maximum of 4 stars. Ebert stated in his review: "It
illustrates one of my favorite points, that silence and waiting can be more
entertaining than frantic fast-cutting and berserk f/x. For extended periods
here, nothing at all is happening, and believe me, you won't be bored" Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman gave
Paranormal Activity an A− rating and called it "frightening...freaky and
terrifying" and noted that "Paranormal Activity scrapes away 30 years of
encrusted nightmare clichés", Bloody Disgusting
ranked the film 16th in their list of the "Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade",
with the article saying, "Peli deserves props for milking the maximum amount of
tension out of the spare, modern setting—an ordinary, cookie-cutter tract home
in San Diego. It doesn't sound very scary, but Peli manages to make it
terrifying. If you aren’t white-knuckling your armrest at least once or twice
while watching it, you probably don't have a pulse.." However, David Stratton of the
Australian version of At the Movies remarked
that "it was extremely unthrilling, very obvious, very cliched. We've seen it
all before."
Box office
The film opened on September 25, 2009, to 12 theaters taking $36,146 on its opening day and $77,873 on its first weekend for an average of $6,489 per venue. It took more success when it opened to 33 theaters on October 1, 2009, doubling the box office reception, grossing $532,242 for an average of $16,129 per venue, bringing the 10-day total to $776,763.
As it expanded to 160 theaters on the October 9–11 weekend, the film grossed $2,659,296 on that Friday having a per-theater average of $16,621. It went on to gross $7,900,695, which was $800,000 more than originally estimated. Over the weekend, the film reached the week's highest per-theater average of $49,379, coming in at #4 for the weekend, behind Couples Retreat, Zombieland, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Over the weekend of October 16, 2009, Paranormal Activity expanded to 600 more theaters, grossing $19,617,650 with $25,813 per theater average gross, and bringing the total gross to $33,171,743. On the weekend of October 23, 2009, Paranormal Activity rose to #1, beating out the expected number one box office victor Saw VI, earning $21,104,070, expanding to 1,945 theaters for an average of $10,850 per theater, compared with the $14,118,444 gross from 3,036 theaters, and $4,650 average for Saw VI. The film has grossed $107,918,810 domestically and $85,436,990 in foreign markets, with a total gross of $193,355,800.
Accolades
The film was nominated for "best first feature" in the Independent Spirit Awards 2009
Home release
Paranormal
Activity was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 29,
2009. The home release
media includes an alternate ending to the theatrical version, in which Katie
slits her own throat in front of the camera, then collapses to the floor. It was released in
the UK on March 22, 2010 on DVD and Blu-ray with some specials. In the
Netherlands the movie received a release on VHS in 2010.
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