Do Not Taunt The Internet!

It took me many months to get over the awesomeness of G.I.Joe, but eventually the flame flickers out and we all must move on. It would be pretty hilarious if I did take a movie-watching hiatus after watching a former Dr. Who and the kid from 3rd Rock From The Sun get locked up in a super laser prison (oh, spoiler alert, eh none of you are going to see it anyway), but I have seen other films since then, including District 9 and Inglorious Basterds both of which were mostly awesome. Considering how generally shitty the first half of the summer was for movies (other than Start Trek of course), it was reassuring to end it with two movies that I didn't have to grab for straws trying to justify how they could be remotely good.

Then the drought occurred. Perhaps it didn't help that I had a free pass to any Regal Cinema after an A/C malfunction made the last half of Inglorious Basterds very unpleasant and Chris Ferry got our group free passes. For some reason, having the ability to waive any 12-dollar ticket charge made me extremely picky. Also, nothing that great was coming out. I think Nine was the closest thing to watchable during that period, and honestly I could play the PS1 game Oddworld and probably get a similar effect of "weird cuteness in crazyland" that Nine seemed to promise.

Fortunately, the drought seems to have passed, and there are a bunch of movies out or coming out that I want to see, and have wanted to see for a while. One that I saw this pass week which wasn't on my radar was Paranormal Activity, a movie which has done bonkers box office due to a successful online viral marketing campaign. This wasn't what drove me to see the movie, just good reviews and word of mouth. I have to say, it was some creepy shit.

The plot is basically The Blair Witch Project in a mcmansion. A couple move into a house together and start experiencing strange occurrences in the night. The guy buys a camera and decides he's going to film their room as they sleep. The film begins with the hauntings already in progress. While there are some gaps in logic, there are also some explanations as to why the old "Get of the fucking house!" solution doesn't work. There are some good scares and some great atmosphere for a low budget movie, although I think that if you have your skeptical armor on and are ready to dump on the movie then it's probably not for you.

I've discussed before how the internet can work for and against movies, sometimes creating an unjustified backlash to perfectly good movies. This movie went the internet viral campaign route, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. In this case it worked initially. For some reason the Verite' style flicks can pull this off, while with the more traditionally shot Snakes On Plane it did not. One thing I have noticed though, is that on various message boards, particularly the scholarly Internet Movie Datbase (IMDB), there is a strong backlash now brewing against Paranormal Activity. The main subjects being brought up? The origin of this "demand" in the "because you demanded it!" that the viral campaign speaks of, and how the actress in this movie is too fat compared to say, Megan Fox.

The former is a perfectly reasonable question, because nothing grinds the gears more of the free-thinking web community than the thought that they're being told what to buy and do, like from advertisers and shit. By gum, they want to rally behind one idea concocted by a message board surfer like themselves, not some scab from Universal or Warner Bros. They beat the music industry, and eventually they will crush the film industry, right? The entertainment industry as a whole is not going to mutate into something unfamiliar in a few years, a "digital entity" that will resume vacuuming dollars out our wallets again, right? Answer forthcoming in the next five years.

The latter, which is par for the course when it comes to your average message board of 300-pound virgins, is why I don't want the "free-thinking web community" to take all the power. As awesome as I think it is that for once smaller independents can play with the big boys in music and film, even videogames, I also don't want to take my critical viewpoints from 'DarkKnight22443' whose Idiocracy-caliber opinions could determine whether people may or may not see a movie. Of course there is choice and millions of opinion brewers out there, I guess I'm just amused at how whether or not a movie is worth seeing is based more on factors other than the quality of the movie itself. How it was promoted, what the intentions of the people making it are, whether or not the main actress is hot, whether or not The Road will have a baby on a spit, why one of the actors does that in that one scene, how that scene ruined the entire 2 hour flick, how it better resemble The Dark Knight or else, and so forth.

In other words, if you like creepy movies and don't have a problem with a movie starring an actress who is not Megan Fox, then check out Paranormal Activity. I think Fantastic Mr. Fox will be up next for me, although there are a lot of complaints on the message boards that it's too much like a Wes Anderson film. It IS directed by Mr. Anderson, so I take that as a glowing review.