Paranormal Activities

Hey Charlie, today I would like to talk about the movie Paranormal Activities.
Paranormal Activities is a 2007 horror movie written directed and produced by
Oren Peli.

Oren Peli is a film director well-known for his Paranormal Activity movies (there 
are 6 of them) who went on to produce many other big horror movies such as 
insidious or even area 51.

The first Paranormal Activity movie is well known because of the rising interest in 
« found-footage » movies. This new genre was first introduced in 1999 with « The 
Blairwitch Project », the genre became very popular by particularly affecting the 
audience bringing in new and stronger emotions.

Up until then, horror movies were well known rely either on gore images (blood or 
human insides were meant to bring disgust to audience), or on suspense (Alfred 
Hitchcock for example is famous for his movies based on suspense).

This new style revolutionizes the horror movie industry, it is supposed to bring the 
audience into the story. In order to do that, the movie must seem like camera 
footage that has been found somewhere, so there must not be any sign of it 
being fictional. This makes the story look much more real, and makes the 
suspense (and other emotions) much stronger.

Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez (directors of « the Blairwitch Project ») 
manage to create this effect by imagining 3 student filmmakers who walk into 
woods to make a documentary about a legend, and who find out that that 
legend actually exists.

In Paranormal Activities this effect is created by imagining a young man who 
discovers peculiar things going on in his house and who wants to film them to 
find out what « it »is. The audience see what the cameras in the house captures.

Another impressive fact about these “Found-footage” movies is that, compared 
to other horror movies that include a lot of editing, and CGI effects, these 
movies require nearly none. This means that they are very cheap to produce, 
as a result: Oren Peli had a budget of 11.000$ to produce Paranormal Activities, 
and when released, the movie produced over 193 Million $.

I am particularly interested in this new style and personally, I find that they make 
the story much more intriguing and the tension much stronger.

I hope this post will have been to your interest, and if you have anything you 
wish to add or to ask, please post it in the comments. :)