Month of Horror - Day 12: Paranormal Activity

PEOPLE! PARANORMAL ACTIVITY IS NOT FUCKING AROUND! I'm going to try very hard not to give anything away so this review will be pretty short. The basic plot revolves around a young couple of hotties who think there's something strange in their neighborhood. Instead of making the appropriate phone call, they ignore Ray Parker Jr. and decide to handle things on their own despite his ascent up the 1984 pop charts. The hotties place a camera in their bedroom and wait for something irregular to show up. Then my wife broke my hand. Then I developed an irregular heartbeat. Then I pooped myself a little. This movie is scary.

If you haven't heard about Paranoral Activity yet, don't feel bad. None of my friends I texted afterwards knew what I was talking about either. Here's a little history to catch you up. This guy named Orin Peli scraped together $11,000 and shot a horror movie in his bedroom. He called it Paranormal Activity. It started gaining buzz at film festivals, including Slamdance, and was eventually picked up by Dreamworks. Steven Speilberg loved it but made a couple suggestions. A new ending was shot and the length was shortened.

Now Dreamworks had the unique task of marketing an $11,000 movie to the general public. They decided to try viral and word of mouth marketing. And it worked. They opened in select college towns and started up a website where you could request that the film would open in your town. A million requests would guarantee a nationwide release. I requested Salt Lake City somewhere around 311,000. Within the next 48 hours, the magic number had been reached. So keep your eye out, it'll be headed to your town soon. Some tips for those excited to see Paranormal Activity: first, don't read too much about the movie before you go--hype has the potential to kill your fun deaddeaddead. Second, take your friends along, you'll want someone to talk to afterwards. Third, wear Pampers.