I can’t actually review this film as I normally would. Your level of enjoyment resting heavily on your knowing nothing about it.

Going in cold is the only way to really see it. However, I will make fun of the characters. Because hey, it’s the Cavalcade…and one of them is an ass.

Structurally, this movie sharply constructed around building tension. So much so, in fact, that in a different movie, all the cat scares would just be a waste of time.

A “cat scare” is the shock of sudden movement or a noise that jolts the audience, breaking the tension before ramping it back up again. Usually, its a false scare in the form of a startled cat jumping out from under the bed that causes the hero/victim to jump, relax, and then promptly get stabbed in the face by the Killer in the Closet™. However, In Paranormal Activity, the cat scares don’t break the tension-instead turning it up even more.

Scary things have been happening to the main character Katie for her whole life, and she has kept it from her boyfriend until they moved in together, and where most men would break up with her, this guy tries his hand at becoming the next Felini. Because he’s an idiot.

This is all in the first ten minutes, so we’re still fairly spoiler free.

The female lead finds her keys on the ground, and she didn’t leave them there. Not scary. Later a door slams on it’s own. These incidents build and build like this in ways I won’t spoil until neither we, nor the main characters, can handle the tension. The girl gets anxious about the paranormal presence, the guy makes a joke that’s not funny. As the audience gets more on edge, he makes some obscene gestures with his hands. He tries to get her to have sex on camera, SCARY THING. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Later on, he more or less beats his chest and says, “No demon messes with my girl!”, as though wearing his white baseball cap wrong and popping his collar is going to stop something that’s been around since the 1500’s or so and is obviously bitter about it.

A claustrophobic little film, it takes place in roughly 4 rooms of a  single house; and as the tension continues to build you’ll start looking for things to be scared of, scrutinizing the screen and thinking, “Ohmigod! Was the cabinet open before? Did the lights just flicker? Holysh*tbirdeatingcrappants!”

Coupled with amazingly visceral effects, great atmosphere, editing intentionally slapdash, and performances that are so “blah” in their presentation that these characters can only be real people-Paranormal Activity is a great shocker. As an added bonus, when you see it again, it’s hysterically funny. Calvacade this one with  The Blair Witch Project or Quarantine for more psudo-reality film scares.

“They’re heeeere.”

Two words that were never able to be used together again without thinking about television static, a creepy little blond girl, and just how disturbing the suburbs really are. After the memorably creepy opening scene where little Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) sits waaaay to close to the TV and has an interactive viewing experience that predates the Nintendo Entertainment System by 3 years, the movie abruptly shifts to a montage sequence of a bright, sunshine-filled subdivision, where the children and the antelope play. Ok, no antelope, but in 15 years there will be a Caribou Coffee on every block. All of these shots of quaint perfection serve to provide a backdrop and counterpoint to the events that follow.

The film continues innocently enough after that, at least for a while as the supernatural phenomena continues to escalate. Furniture stacks itself on tables, or occasionally slides around rooms, to the bewildered enjoyment of the family (Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Dominique Dunn, and Oliver Robbins). However, things soon start to take a dark turn when glasses explode and trees start getting inappropriately handsy. Soon enough, the experts are called in, Carol Anne gets sucked into the closet, and a creepy little southern medium (Zelda Rubinstein) channeling Tammy Faye Baker starts speaking fallacies like “This house is clean” and screaming “Don’t go into the light!”- things that would soon become part of the pop-culture mainstream of the 80’s. Plus there’s a couple of nifty scenes involving goopy tennis balls and a rope, and the black dude doesn’t get killed, thus signifying the real progressive progress promised by the shift from 70’s Sci-Fi/Horror.

Produced and Co-Written by the freshly-popular Steven Spielberg, the movie is full of the trademarks that would go on to define his films. The suburban setting, the interplay of day-to-day comedy with supernatural elements, the camera work, and the technical proficiency with the special effects all would be seen again in things like E.T. Extra Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. He gets first mention primarily because of the storm of controversy about who actually directed the picture, Spielberg or the credited Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Lifeforce).  Reports are sketchy about it, from all parties involved, though Hooper has always maintained his was the final word on the set. Which is strange, because even his supporters don’t go that far. As already stated, there’s a lot of Spielberg in this picture, and not nearly as much Hooper, when comparing their bodies of work. Wether that is the myth of fingerprints or signs of a versitle director, I’ll leave up to you. You know why?

Because it doesn’t freakin’ matter! The movie is awesomely weird and fun to watch, considering that it the plot doesn’t really have any sense of internal logic, so you’re left with entertaining characters in odd situations with special effects that are (for the most part) still eye-catching to this day. Something that’s perfect for an audience like the Cavalcade. As a matter of fact, the only problem our audience had was with the fact that this was the third film in our event that was a big loud blockbuster type of Ghost movie, leading to movie fatigue. It would have been a better balance for us to have had at least one of our movies be a quieter b-movie type, to keep from getting hammered by the pictures. But make no bones about it, when selecting films for an event, Poltergeist is a solid choice.

As the omnipresent eye of the audience hovers above the dark mansion in the woods, a storm is brewing-both outside and within. passing through an attic window, the camera drops down past the rats, and through the hole in the floor as screams rush up out of the speakers. Eventually our view settles on a woman rushing through a house as the carpet and the walls themselves reach out to take hold of her. Suddenly,  an elderly woman appears in her bedroom door wielding a long-barreled shotgun and, while backlit by a clash of lightning, blasts the possessed floor covering right between the indistinct eye-sockets, causing the spirit housed within to rush out towards the us, blanketing our eye in darkness, as the ghostly titles materialize into view. Here we are again, ladies and gentlesirs, rollicking through another night with another typical Peter Jackson film family.

While working on the script for Heavenly Creatures (which if you haven’t seen it, stop reading this and go do so now– –we’ll wait), Jackson and partner Fran Walsh met with Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit), and pitched the idea of a con-man using ghosts to swindle customers. The original idea was to have it be a segment directed by Zemeckis in a Tales from the Crypt movie, but after reading the first draft and seeing an early preview of Heavenly Creatures , he felt that it would be better if the Kiwi headed up the project.  The result is a movie that at times is damn scary, at others cartoonish, and as a whole-pretty good.

Focusing on the previously mentioned psychic con-man Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox), his merry band of spooks (played by Chi Mcbride, Jim Fyfe, and John Astin), and their run-in with the supernatural serial bully known as “The Reaper”. Along the way, Bannister tussles with an “eccentric” FBI agent brilliantly played by Jeffery Combs (Bride of the Reanimator, The 4400), finds love with a widow (Trini Alvarado), and shares a few tender moments with his kooky neighbors (Dee Wallace, R. Lee Emry).  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Somebody needs to get Peter Jackson to write a family sit-com.

On to the movie itself: The special effects, AMAZING ten years ago,  are still intriguing, but dated (Funny: 80’s movies, with their practical muppetry, strobe lights, and hand-drawn animated lightning, ended up aging much better than the early CG powerhouses like Stargate). Of special note is The Reaper and his WICKED scythe. Why they didn’t make a holiday toy out of that, I’ll never know. Imagine, kids running around with a big, sharp implement of grim decapitating destruction. Laughs for the whole family!

The story has an internal logic, but is basically there to move you from plot point to plot point.  A word about the director’s cut: While it makes more sense than the theatrical, it also seriously drags in parts, especially early-on, when they’re setting up the relationship between Bannister and friends.   So while this film is completely recommended for the Cavalcade, grab the shorter theatrical cut to keep things moving along.