Spoiler alert: Stay away from this review if you don’t want minor spoilers.

If you don’t know by now, I’m a big fan of scary movies. Everything from Halloween to Psycho to Session 9 to the Orphanage…I love it all. I was super excited to see Paranormal Activity when I heard about it. I am a big (and apparently only one of a few) fan of Blair Witch Project and was ready to see a movie made in a similar vein.

You meet Katie and Micah, a couple living in San Diego, California. First of all, I need to meet a sugar daddy day trader because their house is AWESOME! Anyway, Katie has had these unexplainable occurrences happen off and on since she was eight years old. She’ll hear people talking to her, feel a strange presence in the room and find her belongings moved around. After moving into a house with Micah, these occurrences become more regular and even worse.

Now, this had the potential of being scary movie. The problem is, I didn’t care AT ALL about the characters. If I had been haunted for thirteen years of my life, I wouldn’t act as nonchalant about the hauntings or joke the way Katie does. This didn’t seem like a defense mechanism; instead, it seemed like the product of bad writing and acting. She never really convinced me that she was that scared; if anything, I felt that she was more irritated or just tired. After a while, she got on my nerves. I remember people complaining about Heather from Blair Witch Project being annoying and becoming a character that you almost hope to see dead. But Heather was at least a good actress! She seemed panicked. She was mildly annoying because she was anxious and confused and didn’t know what to do. Katie just seemed bratty and irritated. Her scenes with her friend visiting the house and her scenes with the psychic were not believable at all. Micah, while occasionally funny, didn’t convince me that he genuinely cared at all about what was happening until the last fifteen minutes of the movie.

The “hauntings” are predictable as the timestamp of the camera slows down when they are about to occur. I don’t really know how else the movie could work, but it really decreased the tension in the movie since you can expect something to happen. Only one occurrence is even moderately scary, but the rest didn’t disturb or creep me out at all. Several attempts to scare people were just things popping out at the camera which, to me, is more annoying than scary. There were also some holes in the plot (“Goodbye, Diane”) that were never explained.

Overall, I was bored and felt like the movie was way too long (even though it was only 90 minutes!) and had failed to capture my attention. By the end, I had drifted off to sleep (which never, ever happens) and only happened to catch the conclusion because screams in the theatre woke me up. The conclusion was completely expected and lazy, in my opinion, and actually made me giggle.

I appreciate that this movie had a small budget but I just felt like it was a huge letdown. I had heard great things about this movie and was very disappointed. Blair Witch Project was scary and tense and made you feel trapped, even though they were out in the open woods. Paranormal Activity was boring and predictable.