Paranormal Activity

I decided to do a movie that was fresh from my mind and the more recent film i watched. Paranormal Activity, by director Oren Peli, is a film about a young couple, Micha and Katie, who document their expierences with paranormal activity occurring all around their San Diego house. The cinematogrophy in my mind was pulled off very well bringing back the handheld camera view to theatres. In my mind when Cloverfield tried to pull this off, it was ruined by seeing the actual monster. In this movie, it has you on your toes from scene to scene that you know something is going to happen but your not sure what it is or for that matter, what it looks like. The wide screen bedrooms shots were done so elegantly because as soon this shot came up, the audience knew they were in for a thrill ride. This was done by slowing increasing the hype [ex. footsteps, doors closing by themselves, mysterious sounds] from beginning to end. The editing believe it or not was also key for the progression of this movie. In order to move the stuff around the house without being seen, the blue screen effect was put into place so it would appear that for example that the chandelier would move by itself which I thought was an impressive move. The acting was another major priority in this film. By casting unknowns in this film distinguish them from well known actors , which made the audience believe these were ordinary people. For me, these two people made me believe we were simply watching the reality of a couple living in San Diego, and because of that, that's what makes the acting so believable and great at the same time. The camera movement was shaky due to the fact that the camera was either held by the woman or the man. Whenever something shocking would happen, the camera would shake due to panic of the character and this only contributed to the realistic factor that this movie had on the audience. In every horror movie, the lighting has got to be a important key factor. Throughout the whole movie, your trying to guess what this monster looks like. In only one scene, you see the shadow of the monster walk by the door which i thought gave respect to beginnings like Nosferatu. In many horror movies, you gonna have those moments where a random thing might pop out and try to scare you. With this movie, it uses that effect but with a new twist. Just when you think things are alright and nothing could possibly, something pops out leaving you frighten. The audio is a huge contributor to this and in some instances in the movie, there would be no audio at all. By hearing the footsteps and thumps all around the house, that put more suspicion in the mind of the audience. Whenever a horror movie can make you have a phobia of something [Jaws:water, Psycho:showers] and for this movie, the unknown, you know it established itself as one of the greats. This is definably one to check out if your fan of horror movies in general.

Reality and Paradox

In my opinion, the film could be broken down more through a psychoanalysis perspective rather than analyzing each of the film techniques (lighting, editing, acting etc.). Going into the initial viewing of this film, Un Chien Andalou, you had to have the right mindset to watch this film no matter how irrational it might be. For example, when the cyclist is in the corner with books on opposite ends of his hands, Brunel is referencing the discipline methods that teachers used back in the day on misbehaved students. Brunel really test the minds of the audience with his images representing his "unconscious" mind. The question I certainly had throughout this movie is could this all have been a series of dreams he had previous or maybe the images that were represented in this film had meaning to them. Surrealism tends to make the viewer second guess every detail that is being showed and I believe that the more you analyze this film, they more conclusions you can come up with whether they be intentional by Brunel or not. One thing for sure that I noticed throughout this film is the mise-en-scene that scattered all through out this film. Although I may not understand the full meaning of the work of Dali and Brunel, I know that whether it be image of a eye being slit or the way a camera has been positioned, all of this has purpose.