This past weekend, my sketch-loving friends, I had searched high and low for a film sketchy enough to grace the SMSC column of Inside My Head.  Having spent the past several weeks under the spell of the B-movie genre, I decided to peek my head out of the window a bit and delve into something a bit more…current.

In my search for something a bit more frightening (since I’ve come to realize that I simply do not scare easily in my older years), I settled upon Oren Peli’s ‘found footage’, low-budget blockbuster Paranormal Activity.

Originally premiering at the Screamfest Film Festival in the U.S. on October 14, 2007, and soon shown thereafter at the Slamdance Film Festival on January 18, 2008, Paranormal Activity tells the tale of college student Katie and her live-in boyfriend, Micah, as they deal with a rather ill-spirited and increasingly dangerous demon which seems to haunt Katie wherever she goes.

I know. How cliché can a movie get?

PA surprisingly delivers all that other found-footage films seem to lack – substance. There are no tricky camera angles and heavily-implied terrifying moments (a la Blair Witch Project, which left much of the plot to the viewer’s overactive imagination rather than providing visually-spine-chilling scenes).  Instead, thanks to the couple’s desire to catch the demon on film (thus filming almost every waking moment of their lives), viewers are left just as (if not more so) terrified than the incredibly realistic characters.

For example, witnessing Micah’s borrowed Ouija board suddenly start to move then burst into flames just after the couple has left for the evening.  Scary shit.

I will say that, had I been Micah, I would have been gone ages ago – his girlfriend is clearly of the queen bitch variety, and she berates him at every turn.  Why he stuck around for demongirl, I’ll never know.  Love makes people do stupid shit.

Major kudos to Peli for bringing scary back.  With a mere $15,000 budget and a very sly marketing tactic leading up to it’s national release, this first-time director has successfully restored my hopes for any scary-movie genre.  Be sure to check out all three versions of the film, as each has a slightly different take on the same ending – all of which are horrifying and will leave you shocked and afraid to go to bed at night.

And now, my frightful friends, I leave you with this week’s Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema quote of the week.

Micah: [Trying to communicate with the entity while doing an EVP] “What is your quest? What is your favorite color?”

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