Comments on: Paranormal Activity: Small, Cheap, Good

By: April

April — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:00:05 +0000

I loved it, and will see it again, I thought it was awesome.

By: Ibn McVeigh Lives On!

Ibn McVeigh Lives On! — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:18:12 +0000

Speaking of Paranormal: how’s Obama’s economic policies working out for you folks?
I guess hiring someone JUST BECAUSE he can articulate a sentence coherently -unlike the previous Tard- WASN’T really enough of a qualification for the job huh?

Maybe you War Criminals should have gone with that squirrely little Dr from Texas who ACTUALLY FORESAW ALL THIS AND WHO HAD A *REAL* PLAN to address the issues that DIDN’T include stealing from the poor to give to the rich?

Spooky shit man. And the worst thing of all is that they say once you go black you DON’T go back. Trick NO Treats, MF’s.

By: ray

ray — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:05:32 +0000

Okay I went and saw the movie yesterday, and maybe the last five minutes startled me, but other than that no, not one of my better movies. I really think that if people are going to make movies like this, they should get a better background on how the supernatural works, and things to aid “The Demonic activities” realism.

A score 1-10 i give this maybe a 5-6 range.

By: Pud

Pud — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:13:06 +0000

It sucked.

The one GOOD thing about the movie is the actress. She’s delicious.

By: az

az — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:59:46 +0000

Personally, I liked the movie. Sure the acting was on par with BangBros, but the movie becomes much better when you think of it as Maury Jones: The Movie. (I mean the episodes where they have ghost stories rather than the usual paternity tests.)

By: ray

ray — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:05:18 +0000

I’m a big fan of the found footage schtick. It always works on me. I think that it is because we do so much video viewing in our normal lives that we are trained to view that style as real. It’s a manipulative trick, but as I said, it works.

I think that this is how the inevitable House Of Leaves movie should be shot. At least in part.

By: Allen

Allen — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:40:00 +0000

Didn’t like it … Not hostile to horror movies or ghosts, but it was a little too cheesy and the acting was a little too hackneyed/ and the characters were thoroughly unlikable.

…found it unintentionally funny in many places but not quite in a good way.

Filmmakers may have seen one too many ghost hunting tv shows.

By: rick

rick — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:04:34 +0000

I very much liked Blair Witch Project at the time and kind of distrust people who hated it. But still, the actors in this film suck next to the plausible Blair Witch cast. I just kept thinking of how every scene could have been done better, within the aesthetic established.

If I’d been blindsided by this, I would have liked it a little more. Still, the thing’s weirdly watchable. Surprised there weren’t 25 of these things the year after Blair Witch came out…is even slight talent (basically copying Blair Witch Project with lesser actors) that rare?

By: subzero

subzero — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:59:01 +0000

I personally hate “found footage” films. Intentionally bad quality with shaky image and crappy sound and horrible lighting. (It’s kinda like playing really dark video-games. “Yeah, I can’t see anything. Funny!”)

Diary Of The Dead was a huge dissapointment for me. I was expecting your garden variety zombie flick and I got some unwatchable crap instead.

If I have to choose a decent “found footage” It’d be [REC]. At least that had some pulse and some decent acting.

By: Auberge Bartel

Auberge Bartel — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:44:28 +0000

I couldn’t bear to read the last review of the Coens beyond the first otiose line. ‘Scary’ – fuck me. This is terrible writing.

I thought ‘Blair Witch’ was shit. ‘PA’ is probably just as bad as that crappy monster film shot on a handycam. Being lauded as original in American film is rather like looking rich beside the homeless. One simple gimmick and the pant pissing commences apace.

Eileen, you write like the kind of person who gushes over ‘Friends’.

By: T. Hallman

T. Hallman — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:27:25 +0000

“If more of us would get out there and shoot small cheap horror films purporting to be “found footage” instead of grousing about the few “found footage” horror films we already have, it would be a better and sweeter world.”

What if it’s found footage of Madeline Albright, Margaret Thatcher and Yasser Arafat in a ménage à trois? Horror, sure. But making the world and sweet and better place? Definitely for whomever has the videotape, to the tune of at least fifty million dollars to keep a lid on it. But would it change the world for anyone else? (Yasser didn’t even deliver the money shot.)

By: Wilhelm

Wilhelm — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:07:15 +0000

The German movie Missing Allen is an actual good one in that fake documentary style.

By: rossiya

rossiya — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:03:05 +0000

I know Spielberg and tribe need to pimp this Israeli guy to get him off of the unlicensed locksmith racket. But no doubt the proceeds are distributed at Pacific Beach and the Gaslight district in furtherance of conquering the wayward shiksa, who would otherwise sleep in an unmanned bed as a sad outcome of US ‘endless warfare’ duties.

So it was either this or straight porn. You can see quite plainly they had their back to the wall.

By: jimmy james

jimmy james — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:35:30 +0000

And that codger-critic isn’t even right about Wavelength, is he? I know there’s a dead man but it ain’t exactly a murder mystery…

By: Flatulissimo

Flatulissimo — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:40:49 +0000

Sorry, Eileen, I know that writing for the Exiled must make it appealing to out-contrary the contrarians, but this movie was just bad. I can cut it a great deal of slack for having no budget, I understand that there was no budget for actors, special effects, etc. But writing some sort of story or decent dialog before you start filming doesn’t cost anything, and those were the great weaknesses of this film.

You do raise a good point, though: why hasn’t there been a decent “found footage” movie yet, anyway? Paranormal Activity, Blair Witch, Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, Zombie Diaries…there haven’t been that many and they have all been terrible!

By: Hamsterfist

Hamsterfist — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:33:34 +0000

Loved the review and I am glad you did not give too much away. However I was slightly disappointed by this film. Why? I was so hyped and talked about it with all my friends before seeing it. BIG MISTAKE! I wish before watching it, I had known nothing about it. I would of pissed my pants.

By: chugs

chugs — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:55:21 +0000

the question is should I waste 780Mb of bandwidth to download it?

By: Pablito

Pablito — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:17:07 +0000

I don’t like ghosts, so… it was boring for me. The supernatural doesn’t really set me on edge. Also I was sitting in between a lactose intolerant fat man farting and a bunch of Arab kids text messaging like maniacs, so that might have detracted a bit from the atmosphere. Still, it was a very clever film.

By: Wyse Guy

Wyse Guy — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:03:25 +0000

The Painful Intelligence will continue.

If the stupidity returns, we will kill it.

By: Dr. Luny

Dr. Luny — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:42:55 +0000

No, I think we’re still stupid, but every once in a while hollywood makes a good movie, and every once in a while, they make a few good movies in the same time period, but it’s nothing more than a fluke, unless satiating mindless American audiences with even more mindless cliche-ridden blockbusters is no longer Hollywood’s business model, or Americans are learning to appreciate good movies.

Like I said, It’s a fluke.