two stars, one for each tit

chest-thumping, “movies don’t scare me“, bravado from every other person who left a screening aside, it’s easy to see why a movie like paranormal activity did so well. despite the admittedly tired found footage gimmick, the lack of soundtrack, the rough acting, the simple plot, the absence of plentiful scares, the long takes and some shamelessly manipulative marketing, the movie-going public responded far beyond modest expectations.  what made pa so successful was the fact that it stripped away so much to recapitulate what the blair witch project taught us many moons ago, what hitchcock and tourner have been telling us before film was in color: the best way to tell a horror story is to show nothing at all.

this is where asylum comes in, self styled schlockmeisters with tongues firmly planted in cheek, very much a modern troma studios – noble trash is a really fun idea until you sit yourself down and watch more than 5 minutes of one of their godawful “mockbusters”. paranormal entity is still an interesting case, though, for once the source material is a big hollywood hit that they might actually run the risk of  outspending in their zeal to confuse moms at blockbuster and drunks stumbling over to the redbox in front of 7-11. paranormal activity is, for all intents and purposes, a textbook on how you make a horror movie cheaply, paranormal entity is the movie that scoffs and says “i have life experience so i dont need to take placement exams”.

if you take the premise of activity as the basis for entity, that katie featherstone is tormented by something that ultimately wants to possess her and make her do bad things, entity is almost certainly about something that awakens some kind of fucked up incestcubus that wants to get the mother out of the way so the dead father/definitely possessed son can rape his daughter/sister. right from the start we get the brother, as the cameraman character, acting out the micah/katie dynamic with the character that is supposed to be his sister. he prods her for her innermost thoughts, lingers and dotes on her in a decidedly not-brotherly way, he “accidentally” catches her in less than pants repeatedly, he runs to save her when she calls out for him while the mother character is ignored, rendered catatonic by her husband/son’s powerful psychic urge to molest.

several times in the film, we actually get a little effective bit of business when the brother films himself adjusting stationary cameras, he turns the camera on, the shutter opens and the lens stares at us. we see ourselves and immediately make the connection with the sinister eye. the flat, surveillance style angle we are shown has the immediacy of a pinhole camera angled downward to spy on women using the toilet. we identify with the brother, and he fulfills our wishes by fixating on her body, in one scene literally telekinetically undressing her so we can all get a good look. its one of the only legitmately creepy moments in the film because it’s absolutely earned – in pa, micah (representative of the audience) definitely wants to objectify katies body on camera and katie modestly declines, pe is not the kind of film to deny us such thrills and gives us multiple chances, in skimpy outfits, with and without her consent. just where is this going?

why, rape and murder of course, spoiled by interstitials in the first two minutes of the film after the transcript of a frantic 911 call. interestingly, lots of reviews of this movie point out that that title card is erroneous, which is blatantly false: we are spared the deranged scene of the possessed brother banging his sister because we’ve just sat through (and are implicated in) 75 minutes of merciless eye-fucking. where pa blocks off the room is where the central action takes place, the negative space beyond the door and relative safety of the bedroom is a netherworld. your eye is trained just beyond the door, anticipating the arrival of something your mind might not be able to comprehend. where pe blocks off the action is completely voyeuristic, the sister character fills the frame. as the audience, we’re not looking for a sighting of the demon, the camera is the demon. our desire, the brother’s desire and the demon’s desire are all one in the same. get them titties out.

then we get multiple payoffs, we get her soapy taters in the tub, we get her wandering around in the dark in her bra and panties, when a paranormal-sensitive investigator (read: social worker) is called in to make some sense of it after a serious attack, he’s killed to keep his mouth shut. it comes to a head in the final scene – presumably to cover his own ass, the brother films himself stumbling through a ransacked house to find his ravaged, prone and mostly nude sister inverted on the bed. the obviously staged home invasion wouldnt fool a security guard. the acting wouldnt impress in a middle school play. you are indicted, audience. looking wasn’t enough.

i’m not sure what the filmmaker (the guy who plays the brother) was thinking by conflating the harmless ogling so cheerfully welcomed in these kind of tacky films with incest, rape and murder-suicide, but it sure worked on me. two stars. it was better and creepier than the poughkeepsie tapes.