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SlashFirestorm
I don't even know what this is! This sort of thing ain't my bag, baby!

Age 38, Male

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Joined on 6/14/03

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I don't care what anybody says.

Posted by SlashFirestorm - January 22nd, 2011


Paranormal Activity sucked.

I, managing to avoid hearing any major spoilers for it for all this time, watched it last night in my quest to find scary movies I haven't seen yet. Anticipating something that would at least mildly live up to its reputation as groundbreaking and terrifying, I watched it alone, in the dark, hoping for the best. I watched eagerly, waiting for the nightmarish horrors to begin.

They never began.

Realizing this wasn't going to be a GREAT movie fairly quickly, I began waiting for the jump scares. Ah, jump scares---they're cheap, and their overall effect is minimal without an accompanying "passive fear" background, but at least they WORK. A movie built on jump scares is rarely a GREAT movie, but it can at least accomplish the feat of making the viewer jittery and paranoid.

Those never came, either. And no, the pitifully-obvious-in-advance noises and the final scene with bitch leisurely lunging at the camera do not count.

So I say to myself, hey, maybe the ENDING will be so good it'll make up for it! Oh, wait, no. Bitch gets possessed---barely (I've seen scarier "possessions" from my youngest brother when he loses at a video game). After a long and agonized scream that made me think "ah, finally something will HAPPEN in this fucking movie", she kills her boyfriend offscreen and chucks him at the camera far too slowly and quietly to make me jump. Then she attacks the camera. End. Not even a post-credit stinger for fuck's sake.

And yes, I know it has multiple endings. Looked them up after I was done---they were all JUST AS BAD. At least the one where she cuts her throat has SOME shock value, but far too little to make up for the rest of the damn movie.

In the past few days I've watched/re-watched Dracula (the classic), Frankenstein (ditto, though I'd love to see the 1910 Edison version sometime if it's possible), The Shining (novel's better, but that doesn't mean the movie ain't awesome), Ju-On 2 (the Japanese versions are much better than the Western ones), and Saw VI. They all dwarfed this fucking movie. You heard me right---a goddamn SAW movie, not precisely the pinnacle of cinema, made Paranormal Activity look like a fucking joke. And that is sad.

Maybe I'm just spoiled from a decade and a half of Stephen King and horror movies from the old days, but this movie was so boring, cliche, and un-scary that I get more chills from Lamb Chop's Playalong. Song that doesn't end IN-DEED.

On a scale from one to ten, I give it 0.45. That's slightly better than The Village but slightly worse than a camera with the lens cap still on.

Incidentally, re-watching Dracula the other day...goddamn, those old sets are so awesome. And not just for the 1930's---I've yet to see any bluescreen or CGI backgrounds a tenth as cool and atmospheric as old-school Castle Dracula.

*****

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Comments

I agree with you 100%. The American horror genre is going down the tube, the only slightly good movies that come out are just re-makes of WAY superior foreign horror films. I'm getting sick and tired of all the mindless slasher films and the low budget "artistic" horror films. You just don't see horror movies these days that compare with the classics, or even the ones from the 70s' and 80s' like Phantasm and Hellraiser. Its sad, really . .

Look at me, I'm too cool to respond to newsposts.

Never saw the movie by the way, I'm not really into horror movies and it seemed horribly overrated.

I didn't watch the 2nd one because I thought the same thing about the first PA

I did watch it as well, but you're pretty much covered everyone's thoughts on that.
I DoNt know what the hell the producers are thinking " hahaha... we know it's sht, but if we flood the market with it, then that's all people will have to watch, and we'll make millions, hell we don't even have to put any effort into it, they'll just get crappier and crappier, and we'll be rich!!! muhahaha!!!"
---- ...... very origional thinking people....
anyways, nice to see that some people out there feel the same way.

i thought it was funny to watch though. there was no real script for the movie, they took two people and told them "this is what needs to happen by the end of the movie, have fun" so you cant expect TO much from it :P

ive only ever seen like 3 scary movies: texas chainsaw massacre, final destination 2, and paranormal activity. i need to watch more

I know what you mean.
When I watched it was literally about 30 minutes of previews and then I didn't realize the movie started cause I thought another preview was starting then I realized it was the actual movie.

I've seen the 1910 version of Frankenstein.
Its up on Youtube.