Paranormal Activity - (film review)

            I don’t believe it is a necessary requirement for a horror film to actually be scary to be effective.  As in any genre film, there is no specific end goal other than to relay a particular narrative through a specific style.  Only horror films are charged with this cross to bear—critical reviews of horror films always harp on whether the film succeeds in scaring its audience.  This ‘scare’ factor, like most critics themselves, is highly susceptible and intensely personal and subjective.  For a film to truly scare someone is differentiated from one person to the next, hence the birth of this blog—to discuss horror films without getting stuck in the all too common criticism of whether it is scary or not.  The actuality of a film being scary is a side-effect of the atmospheric direction and/or the narrative itself, not the purpose (despite the intentions of the filmmakers).

            If a film succeeds in scaring its audience, which is getting more and more difficult as more and more audiences are becoming immune and desensitized to horror film narratives, it can come at a rather high cost.  Inevitably, in most cases, the initial scare factor of a film quickly dwindles upon subsequent viewings, and one can easily determine clichéd devices used to acquire such scares—such is the case with films like The Blair Witch Project, Halloween, The Ring, and Friday the 13th.  Fortunately for some of those films, the narrative, direction and action is strong enough to entice interest on a level beyond the initial scare tactic.  Ultimately, a film requires a few more viewings to determine whether the film is truly a good movie in addition to being frightening. 

            This is the case with Paranormal Activity, a film I found to be disturbingly frightening, whereupon the remainder of the day seemed to have this omniscient presence of gloom and depression.  A number of times I have turned to my fiancée to exclaim: “That movie really disturbed me.”  He continued to recall the events in his previous condominium, explaining how he had felt a presence enter his house, close the front door, walk up the steps and make an indented impression on his bed.  The film manages to relish on that undeniable fear that there is something beyond what we see, something potentially harmful, rare, and excruciatingly terrifying—that fear that as we find our way around our houses in the dark, if we dare look up we’ll see it, the shadowy figure we’ve been trying to convince ourselves doesn’t exist.

            The technological devices used to drive the film’s narrative forward is a key factor to the success of the film itself.  Had this been a traditionally cinematic venture, I doubt the usage of bangs, bumps and door slams would have resonated in the way they actually do here.  In fact, what becomes so effective in the way that this film unfolds is the hand-held home-movie feel.  Because the audience is only privy to the information filmed, we are restricted to Micah and Katie’s house, never venturing outside it, never being able to temporarily quell our fears.  We become engrossed by the couple’s interactions with each other and discover, as they do, the happenings of the possession.  Fortunately, the dialogue and acting here is miles better than The Blair Witch Project, which is the significant folly of that film.

            What is the most salient aspect of this film is how personal it becomes.  The distance between audience member(s) and character/plot that is common amongst more traditional narrative films is quite apparent, one can always reassure oneself that ‘it is only a movie’, and that ‘these things don’t happen in real life.’  This film attempts to demolish that boundary between audience reality and the going-ons portrayed on the screen.  It really feels like you are watching actual footage of preternatural occurrences, and that those involved are psychologically damaged from their experiences with it.  This connection to the audience is real and formidable, it is what manages to hold the audience in its grasp and effectively trigger those psychological subconscious fears of sensations one suspects may be paranormal.  Even as I right this I can’t help but consider the possibility that those creaky noises I hear from my basement are the beginnings of someone or something making its way up to hover over me as I sleep.
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Grade: 84% (A-)

Drag Me to Hell - (film review)

            I first saw Drag Me to Hell in theatres, but I purposefully waited to re-watch it on DVD before committing to write this review.  I was never a major fan of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead Trilogy—for me the films felt a little too silly and annoying to be properly enjoyed, but upon reading initial reviews of Drag Me to Hell I became well aware of the kind of relentless, borderline frenetic film I was in store for.  Fortunately, unlike the Evil Dead films, which seem to me to be more of a fun practically nonsensical romp through preternatural realms, Drag Me to Hell is littered with socioeconomic and political significance, especially given these times of capitalist complacency.

            The most significant aspect of this film is that we follow the happenings of the antagonist in the film, Christine Brown, as she struggles against the curse she has been inflicted with due to her callous decision to refuse a third mortgage extension to the aptly disguised ‘hero’ Sylvia.  The film relies on Occidental commonplace stereotypes concerning foreign ‘othered’ relations.  It feeds on how ‘we’ come to see Romani (ie. Gypsy) ‘others’ and the imagined threat they impose on ‘our’ way of living.  The film’s paradigmatic view is the most accessible to its audience—the white, doe-eyed, likeable heterosexual female, who comes from modest rural origins, and (like all of us) yearns to prove herself and get ahead in her job.  It strategically positions Sylvia Ganush as the characteristic foreign threat that imposes herself on our likeable ‘heroine’ audaciously begging for an expansion to her late mortgage payments.

            What the film deftly provides us with is a look into the agential subject position within the overarching bureaucratic, and consequently Capitalist, economic structure, and how this agency relates to the severity of poverty and joblessness.   Up until the last three minutes of the film, the audience is led to believe that there is no other option for Christine but to refuse a third mortgage extension to Ms. Ganush—not unless she wants to upstage that creepy Stuart who is her direct competition for the new promotion.  Her boss, taking advantage of female workplace anxiety around confidence and the inability to keep up with their male counterparts, makes it very clear that Stuart has the ability to make the ‘tough decisions’, implying that she is not.  Christine becomes enraptured by the mass-market fed ‘dream’ of economic expansion to return to Ms. Ganush and refuse her another extension—an extension she so desperately needs to keep her residence of 30 years.

            Drag Me to Hell exposes the individuation of the bureaucratic system and the personal agency of those subjects who comprise it.  The rules of bureaucracy are determined and enforced by people who have every ability to make exceptions and special circumstantial decisions.  Instead, the invisible and omnipresent watchful eye of economic growth lingers over each individual within the bureaucratic system, causing them to self-internalize their own governance—disallowing room for exception or ethical decisions that may slightly inconvenience one for massive benefits to others.  These theories of self-governance are all too familiar to Focault and his work on sexual regulation and economic power.

            Christine in this instance has let herself get swept up in personal perseverance within the Capitalist system (in which we all reside) in such a way as to overlook the immediate needs of someone else—it’s a “dog-eat-dog” world out there and if you don’t look after yourself, no one will.  We all side with her because she’s right…right?  Her rich boyfriend’s parents disapprove of her rural farm upbringing and her menial bank position, deeming her unworthy of their son’s love and affection; her slimy co-worker is actively attempting to weasel his way into her well-deserved promotion; her boss is constantly on alert of her unworthiness to fill the assistant manager position she so desperately wants.  What else was she to do?  The old-woman’s living situation and potential homelessness would not immediately (if at all) affect her, so there is no danger in refusing a third mortgage extension, so why grant her one and risk further economic stasis?  This reasoning becomes incredibly logical to Christine (as I’m sure it does to much of the audience of this film) that she begins to lie to herself throughout the film—“my boss made me do it”, a line which very much echoes “the devil made me do it.”

            The only character in this film who is suspect of Christine’s innocence is Sylvia Ganush’s granddaughter, who calls Christine out on her attempted lies.  The audience is, once again, directed to dislike the granddaughter, because she speaks with a foreign Romani accent, is shadowed upon reveal, and is not kind to our troubled doe-eyed ‘heroine’.

            As the film continues, Christine struggles to undo what Ms. Ganush has done, upon her instigation—séance, exorcism, animal sacrifice (from a vegetarian no-less).  The animal sacrifice is of some saliency here, for Christine attempts to prove her niceness and innocence throughout the course of the film, explaining that she’s a vegetarian and volunteers at the puppy shelter (for Christ’s sake!).  However, these ethical principles become obsolete once she is faced with the responsibility of her actions.  Responsibility she so desperately wishes to be free.
            Ms. Ganush becomes our struggle against callous inhuman bureaucracies that would rather kick us out of our homes then inconvenience themselves.  She is the struggling ‘other’ who audaciously fights against spineless administrative pawns and their complacency to work within the system so long as they benefit from it.  In the last three minutes of the film the audience becomes aware of Christine’s decision and the personal agency involved in sending Sylvia from her home.  She apologizes for her actions spurring her boyfriend to call attention to her big heart—but is this the case?  Her apology only comes once the reality of threat is extricated—extricated into the soul of the harbinger of such devilish mayhem.  Prior to this extrication, she actively sought to fight against her own agency and responsibility in the decision she made.  She wanted forgiveness early on in the film, but not forgiveness for her selfishness—she was not willing to divulge that just yet.  Instead, she fought, only relenting to accept her responsibility for the actions that have taken place once she believed that she had won.  It is in this instance where Christine gets precisely what she deserves—in the metaphorical and cathartic dialectic world of horror.

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Grade: 89% (A)