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RATING:   
SINGAPORE : Immediately after the lights came on at the screening of "Paranormal Activity", the woman seated next to me turned and asked, without a hint of knowing sarcasm: "Real or not, hah?" That alone should suffice as a review of the movie.
The now famously low-budget horror flick - it was made for just US$11,000 (S$15,000) and has grossed over US$97 million in the United States alone - is spectacularly clever in achieving a few good scares for less than what it costs to dress most actresses for the red carpet premiere of a typical Hollywood movie.
It starts simply with a credit thanking the families of Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, the young couple seen being terrorised by a haunting in the film.
We learn that they've just bought a video camera in an attempt to capture proof of paranormal activity that might be happening in their home, and the rest of the film is pretty much a collection of "found footage" pieced together of unseen things going bump in the night.
The comparisons to "The Blair Witch Project" are inevitable - but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Ten years ago, that low-tech fright fest pretty much introduced the "home video" genre to movie-goers and "Paranormal Activity" simply speaks that language without having to explain itself.
But the effectiveness of its amateur night-vision scares owes pretty much everything to the popularity of programmes involving paranormal investigations on television.
Shows like "Ghost Hunters" and "Most Haunted" have taught us to look for the shadowy movements in the corner or listen out for the strange sounds in the dark.
And because what we're watching on the big screen looks just like those "real" encounters on the telly, these creepy shenanigans must, therefore, be "real", too.
There are some genuinely goosebumpy moments in this NC16 film, anchored most successfully by a regular static shot of the couple's bedroom - with an open door and a dark hallway beyond it. And you know it's not the pizza delivery guy who's about to come through it.
It does feel a tad too long (there's a thin line between "slow burn" and "not much happening") but it is a genuinely fun time spent in the dark. A definite pop-cultural marker.
The scares of "Paranormal Activity" will linger nights after you're done with the popcorn. But perhaps the real legacy of the film is how a former video game designer shot and edited a winning film in his own home with no money, a crew of three, and one video camera.
Now that's weird.
- TODAY/il
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