TheBloodshotEye.com: Small budget "Paranormal" gets big response
"Paranormal Activity," the most buzzed-about micro-budget horror movie since "The Blair Witch Project," gets an exclusive midnight screening Friday at the Studio on the Square as part of the Indie Memphis Film Festival.
A scene from "Paranormal."
The screening will be hosted by celebrity fan Craig Brewer, who used his Paramount Pictures connections to get the movie to Memphis. So far, "Paranormal Activity" has no other scheduled local play date. A Paramount representative told me this morning that the movie is "NOT currently scheduled to be released in Memphis, so this may be your only opportunity to see the film before its home entertainment release."
Hyped as "the scariest movie of the decade," "genuinely hair-raising" and "freaky and terrifying" in the critical blurbs found on the movie's website, director Oren Peli's "Paranormal Activity" represents an even simpler take on the faux-found-footage narrative strategy of pseudo-documentary "Blair Witch." Shot in a week with a hand-held video camera for a mere $15,000, the movie takes place entirely in a two-story "haunted" tract house in suburban San Diego; what the viewer sees onscreen is the footage supposedly shot by the two main characters, a young couple who keep the camera rolling throughout the night to see if they can capture evidence of supernatural activity. (The version now rolling into theaters features a new ending, reportedly suggested by fan Steven Spielberg, who saw Peli's original version not long after it was completed in 2006.)
Back in the real world, Paramount and the filmmakers also are attempting to replicate the little-movie-that-could rags-to-riches narrative arc of the "Blair Witch" success story (a $35,000 production that collected some $250 million at the box office). So far, "Paranormal Activity" is opening in very limited release, mostly in college towns and at festivals, and Paramount is relying on Internet buzz and fan-generated electronic word-of-mouth (including a "Tweet Your Scream" twitter feed) to create demand.
Tickets to the Indie Memphis screening, for those without festival passes, are $6 each.
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