With Halloween just around the corner, my annual craving for cinematic horror has been off the charts. The past few years I have found that I am forced to quench my appetite at home with old reliable flicks like “Rosemary’s Baby” or “The Exorcist” — certainly not at the theater.
Call me crazy, but I struggle to find the entertainment value in watching a character strapped to a chair and forced to carve off his or her limbs rather than be showered by a vat of acid looming above his or her head. For me, that feels like a sadomasochist twist on Looney Tunes — not my bag. These grotesque cinematic outings like “Saw” and “Hostel” have pervaded the 20th century horror genre. But with the unforeseen success of a minimalist horror in “Paranormal Activity,” I’m pleased to report that there is substantial hope for the future of the genre. With scathing reviews from critics and a severely disappointing showing at the box office last week, it looks like the “Saw” franchise is finally passé, and I have no one else to thank but “Paranormal Activity” writer and director Oren Peli.
“Paranormal Activity” is as bare-bones horror as they come. Shot on simple equipment over a few weeks in a singular location with unknown actors, the film is quite the aesthetic antithesis of “Saw.” For the squeamish, it’s the same story in the gore department. You will not find severed limbs, mutilated corpses or exposed organs in this madhouse. Instead, Peli offers his audience a slow-cooked stew of psychological terror as we see a couple slowly descend into a state of crazed paranoia. Watching the two main characters speculate as to what is haunting their humble middle-class abode is an exhausting, albeit rewarding venture, for its success is not dependent upon ultra-stylized violence or shock value, but rather a palpable sense of realism. By refusing to show the true demonic culprit terrorizing this couple or indulge the torture porn enthusiast viewer, Peli has rendered himself something of a horror revisionist.
Peli’s success with “Paranormal Activity” is sure to be copied in two routes: styling and marketing. I’m a sucker for expert uses of minimalism and I hope Peli’s horror contemporaries try their hands at the method, but I’m anticipating more traffic on the latter route. “Paranormal Activity” employed a genius scheme of viral marketing that entailed cyber press via social networks and most importantly — a trailer solely composed of night-vision camera footage of audiences watching the film at an advanced screening.
After basking in torture porn violence for the past few years, American horror audiences have become incredibly used to seeing terror spelled out in slashed tracheas and coiled intestines. If someone is going to be decapitated, you can bet your bottom dollar that you will see the weapon slowly chisel through the flesh and every drop of blood you can imagine.
With “Paranormal Activity,” however, not very much is spelled out at all. In fact, the terror is embedded in the mind of the viewer. This wild sense of anxiety makes for excellent horror, especially when it is achieved through such minor effects as the crack of a door or the ruffle of a bed sheet. It’s real, and it’s really scary. I hope horror directors take note of what Peli has done here with “Paranormal Activity” and consider what could happen to the genre if we put the chainsaws and butcher’s knives down for a hot second and let audiences use their imaginations again.
You can reach this columnist at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
