I don’t care much for scary movies (they tend to bore me), but I do enjoy watching other people reacting to them. That’s why I love the new trailer for Paranormal Activity, a $10,000-budget horror flick that’s been frightening film festival attendees since 2007 and which finally opens in regular theaters next week.
The trailer focuses on footage of the audience of a recent screening of the film while showing very little of the film itself. The idea is to show us that people are indeed scared silly. But what I appreciate, as a strong advocate of moviegoing, is that it kind of tells us we need to see this thing in a theater with a large crowd for the optimum experience.
I guess you could still wait for the film to hit DVD and do your screaming and jumping from your couch, but doesn’t it look more fun with a bunch of strangers? Personally, the trailer makes me want to watch the rest of the night-vision audience-cam footage more than the actual film, but hopefully going to the cinema to see this will be just as good. As long as nobody minds me sitting in a lawn chair in front of the auditorium, facing the seats instead of the screen.
Unfortunately, on September 25, Paranormal Activity is only opening in 13 cities and the closest to my home of NYC is State College, PA (and that’s a very long bike ride to see a movie!). But so far only myself and 429 others have “demanded” it play here, so I’ll probably never get the chance to experience the film as it should be. Maybe I can sneak into the homes of people who’ve rented it, though, and watch their reactions?
Check out what other film blogs are saying about the trailer after the jump:
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Just as we’d prefer for Hollywood to remake bad films rather than beloved classics, we’d also like to see more TV adaptations of obscure and failed series — as long as there’s going to be such a giant void of creativity anyway, why not go for the forgotten titles and at least make it seem like you’ve got fresh ideas?
Unfortunately, Hollywood continues to ignore our logic and is instead adapting the popular 80s cop show T.J. Hooker for the big screen. It may not be the most familiar or beloved series of all time, but it has enough name recognition to make it a success, a la the S.W.A.T. and Starsky & Hutch movies before it.
We have no interest in yet another veteran/rookie team-up, though, especially a blatantly recycled one. So we decided to mine deeper into our TV Guide issues from the 80s and pick out some lesser-known high-concept shows that would make awesome movies if only they had more of a built-in, nostalgic audience to justify a green light.
Check out our pitches after the jump, and thank us when Hollywood gets wise to the ideas.
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At his blog, Glenn Kenny has a great fleshing out of a theory I’ve heard but haven’t, up to this point, given much thought to: the idea that Anton Chigurh, the killer played by Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men, could be a ghost, or some other kind of supernatural embodiment of absolute evil.
Kenny’s got some good points, and as far as wildly speculative theories go (always dangerous when it comes to the Coens), his take certainly does offer an easy read on some of the more troubling details of the film’s final act. But I still don’t think I buy it. The film spends too much time on the procedural details of Chigurh’s spree, up to and including a long scene in which Chigurh treats his own wounds, which seems to have been put in there chiefly to tell us that he’s human. But what do I know. If you’ve seen the film and/or are prepared to be spoiled, check out Kenny’s analysis and let us know what you think.
Three filmmakers go into a town and find out it’s haunted. Sounds like Blair Witch? The filmmakers say no, everything they captured is completely true. Maybe it’s just people don’t want to believe in ghosts? Paul talks to Patrick Steward and Candace Tenbrink about Cherry Valley (2007).
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“There are all these people who are like a non-people living here in caravans, 15 to a house in parts of England. Completely under the radar, completely unprotected. Like Dickensian England, it’s all here. These people are working for Sainsbury’s, Tesco’s and ASDA, [they] all pretend they don’t know it’s going on. And the government pretends it doesn’t know it’s going on. They’ve designed everything so that those people can be used to keep the cost of living low. There like this sub-human race and I realized that this is really widespread.” From 
