Talkie Zoo: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

Be warned, if you have a tendency to believe in the unbelievable and let it affect your everyday life, don't watch this movie. It's entirely fictitious but is made to look like a person (Micah) has filmed all of the weird episodes on a very upscale home movie camera and sound system.

Paranormal Activity (2007; R) is the story of a demon haunting of a girl, Katie, in San Diego. She claims to have experienced episodes since the age of 8, and the demon has followed her through her life, no matter where she lived. She is living with her boyfriend when the episodes escalate. So, he decides to catch it all on tape. You get the usual run of things that go bump in the night along with broken mirrors and a clawed picture of Micah, looking like he has a bad case of nodular acne. They call in an "expert" who tells them it's not a ghostly haunting, which is his field of expertise, but is demonic. He refers them to a demonologist, who happens to be out of the country when they finally decide to enlist his help. The haunting expert returns, but then leaves quickly out of fear. So he's no help at all.

Micah consults with a Ouija Board, against the wishes of Katie. After that, all hell breaks loose - literally.

There are plenty of scenes that make you want to jump out of your seat, of course, which makes it a good film for those of us who like to be scared out of our wits from time to time. Those who viewed this movie before I did said it was out and out the scariest movie they'd ever seen. Maybe that prepared me for the scary stuff. I don't know. My opinion is that the presentation made it seem pretty scary and believable, but I was unaffected permanently simply because I watched it as a reviewer and had no preconceived notions about the truth of the subject matter.

Yes, it was scary from time to time. The scariest movie I've ever seen? Not really. But maybe I'm just too old to be believably frightened by movies. Grocery prices are a lot scarier to me.