Snarking on Demons and Dumb Couples: A Movie Review

The last time that IP and I saw a movie at the theaters was, well, never. During our dating, engaged, and now married relationship, we’ve never gone to the movies together. Why? Because you can’t talk and snark at the movie when other people are paying $10.00 a ticket. It would be rude, no?

That said, we tend not to watch movies together at home, either. IP has his Hulu or copies of the Lord of the Rings trilogy; I’ve been buying classic costume dramas off (Anne of the Thousand Days, the jewel that is The Lion in Winter) iTunes and watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on my iPhone on the way to work when I don’t feel like reading. We’ll both occasionally rent movies from iTunes, hunt them down on YouTube, but never together. The only movies I can remember watching together are Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Spaceballs early on in our relationship. We also watched the first episode of The Sopranos together.

We can now add Paranormal Activity to that list.

The movie was lent to me by a friend who felt he didn’t have the guts to watch it; he asked the I evaluate it and report back on the level of scary of this movie. I love horror movies—you know my zombie obsession well, and I do have a thing for ghosts and things that go bump in the night. I spent part of Christmas break watching The Haunting, which was pretty well done. I also accidentally watched The House on Haunted Hill (I got confused, okay?) before The Haunting and found it lacking (murder mystery more than ghost film), but enjoyed Vincent Price’s much-missed cheesiness. Anyway, I like to be scared, and will often visit ghost story websites during the day to freak myself out at night.

Paranormal Activity has an 82% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes; I’ve heard nothing but good about it, and my little brother was scared witless by it. I’ve wanted to see it, but given that I usually don’t go to the movies, I figured I’d wait until it was available on DVD/iTunes/Hulu/YouTube. When it fell into my lap, I invited IP to join me. Part of my motivation to ask him to watch it with me was a) I like his snark and 2) I wanted his reassuring presence if I indeed get scared. I like to watch my horror movies in pairs at the very least; I still can’t bring myself to watch Night of the Living Dead by myself, even with IP wandering the apartment.

So, as with anything posted on Sonnet87, beware: spoilers ahead.

A young couple has been experiencing paranormal phenomenon that has been following the female half, Katie, since she was eight-years-old. Micah, her boyfriend of three years, decides that documentation of the events is in order. He somehow rationalizes it to Katie by stating that having proof will empower them to do something about the phenomenon. Okey-dokey! The story is told, documentary-style, as the camera follows them throughout their mostly uneventful days and disturbed nights.

A psychic is called in early in the film, but he can do nothing: what’s disturbing the couple (an English student with aspirations to be a teacher and day-trader) is a demon who wants nothing but Katie. Oh shit! He gives them the name of a friend who is a demonologist and qualified to help them. Micah single-handedly decides that the psychic is full of crap (even though the psychic said, at the beginning of the session, that he tries to find scientific explanations for the events his investigates before jumping to conclusions) and vetoes the idea of calling a demonologist. Katie goes along with it and allows Micah to continue filming so that he can “do” something about it. This guy is absolutely convinced that he can fix this, but never explains how.

The one thing Katie forbids him to do is buy a Ouija board. What does Micah do? He borrows one, because we all know that the hallmark of a strong relationship is twisting each others’ words and meanings to get our way! And here is my big beef with the film: lots of people are saying it’s great in that it showcases and nicely represents a relationship. To which I say: WTF? He never listens to her, he dismisses her concerns and reasoning, he keeps on doing things that are aggravating the situation instead of helping it, and might I emphasize again that he never listens to her? This spoof on YouTube nicely sums up Micah’s prevalent dialogue (starts at 1:47):

Seriously, this guy has to have it his way. He rationalizes this by pointing out that Katie never spoke of the haunting before she moved in with him. Okay, fair, but his solutions to the situation do not make things better, they just make things worse. But he’s the techy expert, right, and technology is the solution to all man’s problems, so she should just go along with him. Which she does. Things start to get worse: noises are louder, doors start to slam, talcum footprints appear and Katie feels something breathing down her neck. Let’s not forget to mention Katie watching Micah sleep hours.

When Katie finally wises up and calls the psychic again, the psychic refuses to stay in the house for more than a moment, indicating that his colleague the demonologist is out of the country and will be back in a few days. Well, Katie and Micah don’t have a few days thanks to Micah dicking around and Katie blindly following his lead. If you don’t want to know the theatrical ending, turn away: Katie is possessed, kills Micah, and then disappears.

The psychic clearly says that a demon feeds off negative energy. Katie and Micah’s relationship descends into nothing but fights and frights. It’s a self-perpetuating situation, true, but maybe it could’ve been solved by opening the blinds during the day to let the sunlight in? Getting out of the house, going for a walk and working together to find a way to deal with this? Turning on the lights when something happened? Maybe ditching the camera for once when the situation seemed out of control instead of lugging it around? I’d say there’s a reason that demon-Katie goes for the camera after she kills Micah (and it has less to do with Hollywood changing the ending): the two things that really pissed off the demon need to go. And they do.

But questions: why does the demon want Katie? Why did it wait 20-odd years to get to her? What is the significance of Diane, whose story was noted as similar to Katie’s? Just to signal that this was random and had no real explanation? Why would the demon carve out or hint to Diane’s name on the Ouija board: to let Katie know she was going to die, too? Well, in this ending, she didn’t. She does in the alternate endings, but in this one she survives, albeit possessed. The Diane thing served only to let us know what Katie’s face was going to look like at the end of the movie (hello, Linda Blair!).

Were there some good scares? Meh, I’d rate them as mediocre. I can remember jumping once, but I fail to remember what point induced the jump. The demon dragging Katie down the hallway was particularly well done, but other than that, the steps didn’t sound too dissimilar to what I hear from our dining room table when our neighbors are active. Some of the creaking reminded me of our old hardwood flooring going crack! at night as they settle, but the association fails to scare me.

IP told me that if we were documenting this sort of activity and I stood over him for two hours (or vice versa), the game would be over. Priest and demonologist for an exorcism, doctor to do some sleep studies, stat. Why Micah doesn’t find this more alarming and sinister is beyond me. The macho act gets old pretty fast, and Katie’s simpering, pouty, but ultimate complicity is infuriating. If IP and I had ever talked to each other the way Micah does to Katie, it would’ve been sayonara a long time ago.

I really wish I could’ve been scared. Instead, we slept soundly through the night with our bedroom door wide open. Many demon jokes were told in our household yesterday. The movie produced much snark, which is always good for us: we love to cackle in tandem over one thing or another. We’re like Tom Servo and Crow, except that we’re in love and we’re not robots.

The only horror the weekend produced was its end, which meant that we had to go back to work.