24 October 2009

The evil of banality

Paranormal Activity

Crit
Geez, this sure puts the occasional rat incursion in perspective.

Went to see what all the fuss is about, and I'm damned if I know. I guess I'd have to acknowledge that it's a well-crafted creeper: once the camera-running-overnight-in-bedroom trope is established, we can't help but study the frame--the doorway to the hall and stairs down, the bedsheets--to see what the next goof is going to be, but with the exception of a couple of good funhouse shocks and two genuinely chilling moments, a goof is mostly what it is, and a clichéd one. And matters aren't helped by the thoroughgoing blandness of the female half of the couple, and the nails-on-chalkboard annoyingness of the male. After a while you're not only down with the inevitability of their destruction by the demon, you can't wait.

Oh, one original bit, at least in my experience: the haunting is not of the house but of the person, so wherever she goes, her demon is Mary's-little-lambish. Only a lot more aggressive.
Trailers

  • Daybreakers--A world where vampires are in the overwhelming majority, and they're still working on that "true blood" product.

3 comments:

Dr. Debs said...

Oh dear. In Daybreakers is Willem Dafoe playing a vampire named Elvis, or is/was Elvis a vamp?

cheeseblab said...

An insurgent nonvamp, I believe, not the resurrected (or reserved) King.

cheeseblab said...

Uh, "preserved," i.e.