Haunting

It’s now ten years since The Blair Witch Project (1999) brought the power of cinema and the (then fledgling) internet together, with its faux-true story/documentary approach to what was actually nothing more (but certainly nothing less) than a well-told (and very creepy) spook story.

It’s interesting that, despite Blair Witch‘s enormous success, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s film did in fact not spawn many imitators in the immediate wake of its release but that recent films such as [Rec] (2007), George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead (2007), Cloverfield (2008) and [Rec] 2 (2009) have (by and large very successfully) resurrected the true-story, hand-held camera account phenomenon, which seems to work better with horror than any other genre.

And Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity (2007), which mysteriously fell off the radar for a couple of years following its hugely popular first showing at the 2007 Hollywood Screamfest Festival, is thankfully another competent example of the form.

Like Blair Witch, the movie presents itself as “found footage”, shot by a couple who apparently became the victims of a demonic entity. Don’t let the by-now perhaps overly familiar artistic contrivance put you off – this is frequently very scary.

The two-person character drama focuses on Katie (Katie Featherstone), and her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat). Katie, apparently, has been haunted all her life by some kind of supernatural being.

Ghost, spirit, demon, call it what you will – Micah buys a hi-tech camera, hoping to substantiate her claim, but increasingly seems less interested in helping her than in getting proof on camera. But the unseen demon seems to be feeding off the attention it is receiving, and the haunting intensifies. Hell is coming…

In truth, despite the naturalistic acting, you never quite buy Katie and Micah as an ‘ordinary’ couple – the virtual absence of any other key characters in the story, with the exception of a ‘psychic’ (Mark Friedrichs), and the only nominal references to any life the pair has outside their home, clearly marks them as actors.

But, as with so much of the very best horror films, the prosaic setting and low-key, gradual approach to the terrors, which begin very simply and build up so subtly that complete credibility is assured, combine to create a genuinely unnerving, personal trip into darkness.

A sequel (please God, not a big-budget ‘remake’) beckons for 2012, with Peli set to helm once more. But the original deserves to be seen – don’t let it pass you by.

98 mins.