Paranormal Activity

Paranormal Activity: Documentary or Bogus?

Film documentaries strive to capture truth and reality in order to depict real life experiences on screen. In other words, documentary is a way of replaying a past experience and exposing it to an audience of viewers. The article titled “Theorizing Democracy” edited by Michael Renovo outlines the intentions of and implications of documentary, as a form of direct cinema, explaining how these films strive to depict pure truth, but frequently include aspects of editing or the filmmakers personality that detract from this principle. Renov’s arguments suggest that cameras were originally invented as a tool to advance investigation and discovery in the scientific world, but have since evolved into other fields of interest like entertainment. Direct cinema involves the idea of nonintervention, which implies that the camera should not serve as a distraction of any sort to the situation being recorded, but this clearly is violated at times when people recognize they are being filmed and inevitably alter their behavior.

As documentaries have evolved from educational, scientific sources into arguably objective films directed toward entertainment, the amount of reality depicted in these films has decreased. It is difficult to examine what truth is actually captured versus what the filmmaker has decided to insert via editing. Interestingly enough, when a film is labeled as a documentary, viewers interpret this label as a film that is fully true and untouched by the editors, expecting it to portray only natural events. As a viewer, I fell for this trickery while watching the so-called documentary titled Paranormal Activity. Because it was marketed as a documentary that follows the events of a couple living in a demonized home, with commercials that appeared to resemble a documentary style film, I entered the movie theatre expecting to witness a real story. Throughout the course of the thriller, nearly breaking off my boyfriend’s hand with my grip, I was on the edge of my seat and overcome by fear. I could not believe the events that were happening before my eyes, but I believed they were true because of what I know about the principle behind documentary. I even left the theatre shaking, scared to go back to my dark and quiet house. After a few restless nights and a few days of emotional scarring, one of my friends overheard me talking about the movie and informed me that it was all fake. As relieving as this was, I was actually angered because the filmmakers imitated documentary like filming strategies to make it appear as real. Feeling very deceived, I decided to rent and re-watch the movie to examine how the producers employing direct cinema strategies in order to make this seem like a real documentary.

One of the first ways I was fooled is because the filmmakers used unprofessional, home-video like footage. Micah and Katie are a couple of three years who move into a new home in San Diego in order to track the paranormal activity that is assumed to be occuring there, and Micah serves as the cameraman throughout the duration, carrying the camera around just about everywhere he goes in the house, even filming irrelevant or boring footage. The awkward camera angles and the incessant shaking of the camera suggest that he is untrained and is just a person filming everything that goes on around him. His love and admiration for his girlfriend is apparent, as he is constantly filming her engaging in irrelevant tasks such as reading, sewing, and eating. By filming nearly everything that Micah and Katie do within their house, the filmmakers strive to imply that the camera was constantly rolling, capturing everything that occurred, leaving little room for inserting anything that could be interpreted as fake or embellished.

Another way this video seems like a real documentary is because Micah always runs to pick up the camera when something strange and uncomfortable is happening to his girlfriend instead of attending to her first. Whenever Katie screams for Micah to come to her, she sprits to pick up the camera off the stand, and then goes to help her once he has the camera in his hands. Because the audience has learned that Micah’s love for Katie is so strong, to the point where you would expect him to run to her before even thinking about the camera, the audience buys into the idea that he really wants to capture all paranormal activity to make his documentary fully representational of the reality of the strange behaviors. For example, there is a particular scene where Katie is in the bathroom and screams bloody murder. Instead of immediately running to protect her, Micah grabs the camera off of the stand in order to film what is happening to her. Ironically, she is not in danger at all, as it was only just a spider crawling on the floor, but she is angered when she sees that Micah brought the camera to film her. Instances where Micah ditches Katie to remain loyal to his camera persist throughout the film, progressing to the point where they even get into a huge fight because Katie feels betrayed, as he focuses more on the footage than he does on protecting his own girlfriend.

Another way in which this film appears as depicting true events is their ability to capture the effects of strange things after they take place, but actually while they occur. In other words, the camera captures strange and inexplicable motions that seem impossible to fabricate. For example, around 2 a.m. on one of their first nights in the house, the camera captures Katie and Micah’s bedroom doors close halfway, and then move back to being fully open. Another example of motion occurs near the end of the film, when their bed sheet inexplicably rises off of their bodies and moves toward the right of the bed, as if a wave of air was blown underneath of their blankets. Because the camera captures these movements, not just the before and after scenes, the audience buys into the actions and are further convinced of the paranormal activity. For example, if they had shown the blankets on their bodies when they first went to sleep, and then shown them on the right side of the bed when the woke up, the audience would be less convinced that some inexplicable force had instigated the actions.

In addition to capturing motion, the film also seems convincing that all of the strange happenings are reality because of their strategy of appealing to various senses. Some of the things they see are doors moving, footstep marks, a cracked picture frame, and a Ouija board that randomly ignited. Instead of just taping what can be observed visually, Katie and Micah experience hearing and feeling the actions as well. In their first week, in the middle of the night, the couple hears a pair of car keys being rattled downstairs. Later, they hear lots of thuds and banging on doors in the bedrooms down the hall. Katie, because she is supposedly being pinpointed and haunted by this demon, frequently says that she can feel it breathing on her, or that she can feels its presence in the room with her. Even more convincing about touching and feeling, Katie actually endures physical abuse from this demon, and has cuts and bruises to prove it. After being dragged out of bed by some invisible force, Katie ends up with a giant purple bruise on the left side of her ribcage. Later, while possessed by this demon, Katie slits her wrists with a cross and ends up with blood all over her hands and legs.

The combination of these strategies to present Paranormal Activity as a documentary replaying real, non-fictitious events serve to deceive the audience that this film is replaying the natural demonic events that occurred to Katie and Micah. This film draws an interesting argument for the debate between whether or not this film should actually be referred to as a documentary. Even though it is presented to portray real events in documentary style, the filmmakers acknowledge that all of the demonic events were made up. This imposes the question of whether this deception is just and moral. The ending credits say that “the characters and events depicted in this photoplay are fictitious” and that “any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.” With these credits, the filmmakers inform their audience that these events are actually fabricated, but if everyone is so frightened by the film, especially the terrifying final scene, who truly wants to stay in the theatre to read the final credits? I surely didn’t, and I fell into the trap of gullibility.