Paranormal Activity

though i might add that it's only scary if you sit down late at night and watch it alone without anybody to laugh with. if you go into it thinking it's funny then it will be funny.

bwp is still the best, dont give a fuck what anyone says, watch that shit late at night on your own then take a walk in the woods

fucking NO

walking in woods at night scares the shit out of me anyway. anyone who can walk through a wood on there own in the pitch black is a harder man than i am, fuck.

  On 10/25/2009 at 6:18 AM, zaphod said:

the exorcist doesn't really do it for me, sorry. i'm more scared by subtle things.

 

this made me really uneasy, although the actual scare moment is kind of cheesy, but brief.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pdd9VBSoag

Dude, hell YEAH - saw this in the theater and this shit imbued me with a sense of terror that . . . well I hadn't felt since this scene:

Apparently David Lynch has the number to my personal nightmare repository

ray mears is hard as fuck amirite?

hm yeah anyway bwp and rec are both much better than this piece of trash

i had to read the youtube comments to understand what the hell was going on in that blair witch clip.

Is it really that freaky? I was more unnerved by the emaciated witch in REC, or the Ringu girl coming out of the well.

the way the film builds up pretty much sells that scene so you gotta be in the zone of the movie innit

yeah kaen has it right. it's quite good if you watch it from start to end. you have to immerse yourself in it but if you do it will fuck with you properly.

One thing that's important to remember is that you can't watch something 300 times and expect it to maintain its scariness.

The Shining is a remarkable movie for about 1,000 reasons that have nothing to do with its ability to scare people. One thing that I really hated about Drag Me to Hell was its reliance on cheap "BOO!" tactics. It's ironic that Atop criticizes Paranormal Activity for the same gimmick.

Anyway, I'm amazed that more filmmakers don't attempt to use a quieter form of cinematic language to scare people. In short, nobody uses the camera anymore to scare unless it's with a snap zoom or a rollercoaster pan followed by some huge percussion and strings. I think the Mulholland Drive scene illustrates the point really well. It was unsettling as hell the first time I saw it mostly because of the editing, camera movement, and the sound work. The reveal of the thing behind the wall was not nearly as jarring as you might think. It was just edited in a way that made the reveal incredibly powerful. Instead of the huge orchestra pounding us as the creature is revealed, there's that deep sunken bass followed by the dude's inability to hear, etc.

Maybe the point is that filmmakers should stop trying to scare people. The moment they try, it all becomes about technique and the context is lost. If any of these fucking stories was worth telling, maybe they wouldn't have to try so goddamn hard.

  On 10/25/2009 at 5:27 AM, southside jim said:

This movie really has the potential to be scary...but it depends on the atmosphere of your theater! I went to see this flick last weekend, and the entire theater wouldn't shut the fuck up, constant chit-chat, not a single moment of silence, sort of killed the atmosphere of the movie.

I saw it in a theater with literally 4 other people and I still thought it was meh.

  On 10/27/2009 at 9:05 AM, kaen said:

i get what they were trying to do but oh my fuck did they fail

this

  On 10/27/2009 at 11:00 AM, Adjective said:

  On 10/25/2009 at 5:36 AM, zaphod said:

although as a teen or preteen the blair witch project freaked me out quite a bit, but that was after watching a sci fi channel documentary that built it up as factual, then seeing it and letting my imagination run wild.

exactly! i don't know many people that actually got to enjoy that film in the proper context. i think only people that got to see that sci-fi doc, in that gullible teenage state, and then saw the movie on opening night, were the only ones that truly had a chance of being affected by that movie. anyone that just saw it later on dvd or something completely missed the boat.

I did this too and it made the movie much more effective.

As far as movies that actually scared me: I got into the Japanese horror thing later than most, so I went to see The Ring in theaters without having heard of Ringu, so I had no context for it, and I have to say that movie freaked me out. I was in a theater with only one other person who sat all the way in the back, so it was like I was alone watching it.

I hate to say it but most of the Japanese horror films are fucking useless and they're as gimmicky as the rest. Miike was the exception for me, especially Audition. Again, it's easy to startle people, but that movie fucked me up because the story was brilliant/unusual.

Ringu was fucking stupid IMO.

still undecided whether i'm going to see this or not

for scary movie moments however, this really creeped me out when i first saw it:

I missed the hype for The Ring and when I watched it it scared the fuck out of me. Such an unsettling feeling running through the whole film. Love The Ring.

The difference, imo, between the "boo!" scenes in Drag Me To Hell and in PA, are the fact that Raimi has style....I enjoyed the way they look as well as being freaked out by them, unlike PA

That makes sense.

Watching it now...

I should probably watch it alone at night, but I have to work tomorrow morning, and I know how these things can fuck me up.

  On 10/24/2009 at 11:54 AM, Atop said:

this movie is nothing compared to Antichrist and Drag me to Hell...

 

the 'shit jumping out at you' gimmick makes this film not a good horror film....

 

some of the story within the film was alright....

 

Poltergeist, Ringu, Evil Dead |, || and |||, The Exorcist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Antichrist, Drag me To Hell and The Shining can't exist in the same genre as this film...

 

it is a mockumentary, not a horror film....

drag me to hell was such a disappointment. so lame.

LOL, it's quite a fun film. The use of sound is really amazing; I started wearing headphones once stuff started happening.

What filled me with most dread was that they kept sleeping with the fucking door open. Idiots.

The video of the exorcism is bullshit, but generally the whole thing was engaging and got my heart racing.