Katie Featherston and Micah Stoat in Paranormal Activity
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Gore scenes in splatter movies carry a sadistic punch, but they're outside the average moviegoer's experience, and when they end, so does the tension. Peli wants to convey relentless dread, a feeling we're all familiar with. To that anxiety, PA lends not the shock of rotting flesh but artful, spectral shivers. And even at the end, it refuses to let viewers off the hook. Instead, it leaves them hanging, challenging them to laugh in relief that the 86-minute ordeal is over.
Late arrivals to the phenomenon may think the movie is not so scary. (Too much word of mouth can inflate expectations.) But as they sit in the theater, they should take some pleasure in noticing how the folks nearby are preparing to be scared. And that's the most positive lesson of Paranormal Activity. Movies can still be a communal experience, where a thousand people sit as one in the dark, as fretful and enthralled as a child hearing a bedtime story, wondering, fearing: What happens next?