[VANFLAMESFAN]

So I just got back from seeing the new horror movie, Paranormal Activity. For those who don't know about it, it's a ultra low budget movie, made for 15 thousand dollars. It's a simple story, a girl and boyfriend in a house where and the girl has a demon terrorizing her at every turn. It's filmed Blair Witch style with a hand held camera.

The first question you may ask is probably "is it scary??".......It's scary in the sense that it's pretty damn creepy. Am I probably gonna have trouble sleeping tonight?? Probably not, but that's because I'm 27 years old. But it's definitely creepy and I'm not gonna lie, when I walked into my basement suite here in East Van, I immeadiately turned on a hallway light. There's some real freaky parts, parts that will make your hairs on your arm stand up. There is nothing more frightening than the unknown and the director did a wonderful job in building up tension and letting your imagination do most of the work. There were plenty of scenes where I was thinking to myself, "Oh my god, what the hell is behind that door, what the hell is behind the blinds, what's gonna happen when the camera goes to the right??".......stuff like that. I was really into this movie, and it's hard not to be.

Plenty of the scares were predicatble in the sense that you could see this happening or you knew something was coming, but still, when they did, it was pretty cool. The final scare alone was worth the price of admission for me. The tension built up was fantastic.

The movie dragged at parts. Some of the scenes during the day were unneccesary, but when the camera went on the tripod for the couple sleeping, you knew something was coming. Honest to god, just typing write now, I've had the goosebump feeling a couple times just thinking about a couple scenes.

Overall, a very solid 8 out of 10, definitely the creepiest film I have seen in a long time. It's also proof that a movie doesn't need special effects or gore or a visual villain to be effective. In fact, there is no special effects that me or you couldn't have done with very little training. There is no violence whatsover. And the movie doesn't wrap itself up neatly with a nice little bow. It keeps you guessing, it lets you imagination do the work and it's very effective.

Check it out before this thing becomes like Blair Witch where the hype and buzz ruins your experience. I'm not sure if it's playing in Calgary as it's only in one theatre in Vancouver. Surprising seeing as that Paramount Pictures picked up the rights to the movie.

Here's the trailer......SEE THIS MOVIE