Paranormal Activity

Against all the odds, Paranormal Actvity absolutely works. It's a genuinely scary horror movie. I'll let that sink in for a moment; when was the last time you saw a horror movie that did what it said on the tin?

Of course, horror movies (and books) should do more than scare; I at least expect a decent story as a foundation (the Saw movies can leave the room for a start), characters that I care about (Blair Witch, off you go too), and something with a degree of artistry about it (other genres can expect it, so why can't horror?)

Yes, there have been some great and good horror movies in recent years, but they are few and far between: The Orphanage, REC, Let The Right One In, The Descent... I'm sure there might be a couple more, but on the whole, the discerning horror fan has slim pickings to be honest.

So, yes against the odds, Paranormal Activity works. I hated Blair Witch Project with a passion; while I liked the concept, the execution was poor and underwhelming. It simply wasn't scary and I found the characters deeply annoying. I really didn't need or expect to find anything remotely interesting about another low-fi, mock non-fiction horror movie.

The story concerns a suburban couple, Katie and Micah, who, having recently moved in together, find themselves besieged by increasingly intrusive nighttime visits from an unseen and possibly demonic presence. As night-time eeriness is captured by a night-vision camera set up by Micah, further conversations reveal that Katie has been experiencing such hauntings for nearly two decades, since before her house burned down as a child. Katie can't escape; whatever it is is haunting her, not the house. A medium comes and goes, Micah borrows a ouija board that causes friction between the couple; then he unearths a similar story about a woman haunted and then possessed by a demon that plays on our generations' memories of seeing The Exorcist.

It's a slow and deep focused dread that first-time writer-director Oren Peli wrings from the set-up. Much of the tension is wrung from the night-time camera set-ups, focusing on the couple, their bed and the corridor beyond. Early on, you find yourself peering into the corridor, as the timecode rolls by on the camera, waiting for the jump, for the scare. The build-up is effective, almost ponderous at times, which makes the first real event all the more disturbing: As the clock spins like mad to show the passing of hours between phenomena there is the image of Katie rising from the bed and standing motionless, as if still asleep, for two hours straight, simply staring at Micah.
Soon you're dreading bed-time for the beseiged couple. Scene by scene, the claustrophobia and anxiety grows more and more palpable, and our bond with Katie and Micah stronger.
And it is genuinely unnerving. Later, the scares escalate as Katie and Micah begin to realise the inevitable: there's simply no escape.

And that's one of the great templates of horror, surely. That sense of control being lost, of events escalating beyond one's control, of despair replacing the status quo.

What really marks this out too is the believable performances of Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston (their names in reality too). They're wholly sympathetic and their set-up as a young couple is convincing enough so that a good percentage of the population can feel they could be these people. It's a classic horror set-up, and the reason Stephen King is one of the most popular writers in the world: these people could be you; this is how you might react. It's simple camp-fire horror story-telling, but its a desperately fine art to get it right.

By the time we get to the BIG scare in Paranormal Activity (and for me, it raised all the hairs on the back of my neck and left me reticent to climb into bed that night), it becomes clear that a young man with a couple of cameras and a bit of cash, filming in his own house has produced something that most horror movies from big studios cannot: a ghost train of a film that plays right into our homes and basic fears and leaves us a little bit afraid of the dark. It's just a shame that as time goes on, the exectations of the film from all these glowing reviews will doubtless diminish the impact of this brilliant little film.

So check your expectations at the door and try and see this movie soon.

Gorgeous Vintage and Deco Poster Art For UP

...just beautiful - I hope Pixar make them commercially available as I really want the last one.

Her Fearful Symmetry

Rather belatedly this year I caught up with Audrey Niffenegger's fabulous The Time Traveler's Wife. It had been languishing in my 'To Read' pile (actually it's more like a 'To Read Cupboard' but that's by the by) for some time, but, as the movie adaption was imminent, I thought I'd finally give it a go, then go see the movie. Well, I never got to see the movie (and it seems to have divided critics and lovers of the book alike, so I shall wait for the DVD I guess) but I devoured and adored the book. For lovers of Steven Moffat's The Silence in the Library episode of Doctor Who, there's a huge chunk of time travel mind-fudging at the start of the book that must have influenced some of that Who episode, but after a hundred pages or so of slight confusion as to just how the time travelling works, the book simply takes off and deposits you breathless and, I admit, a little teary-eyed at its end 300 pages later. It's a beautiful, elgiac bit of writing that I believe lost a huge chunk of male readership due to its Richard and Judy Bookclub tag that kind of gave it a chick-novel kind of vibe. And yes, it does play to the ladies, and yes, the movie does make it look like a shmalzt-fest, but for me it was one of the best, most fulfilling novels I'd read all year, beside the incredible The Shadow of the Wind.

I was expecting to be a little disappointed then, by Niffenegger's new book, Her Fearful Symmetry. How do you follow a book that sold by the bucket-load and has such a classic status place in a lot of people's hearts?
Well, of course, you don't. If you're writer worth your salt, you write a book that is an absolute left turn, the absolute opposite of that first book. Although what Niffenegger's new book does share with The Time Traveler's Wife is the question 'What If?' TTTW asked 'What would it be like if we could really travel in time, up and down the years of our life?' And in Her Fearful Symmetry, the question is 'What if we could come back from the dead?' They're both questions that hundreds of writers have asked down the years, but most of them are considered horror or SF writers, but Niffenegger has managed the audacious feat of being a writer who gets away with curious speculative fiction in the populist mainstream.
Admittedly, the strange, supernatural moments in Her Fearful Symmetry are couched in a novel that is at heart a leisurely paced charcter piece. The ghostly element is weaved in early on, but it takes half of the book for the reader to see where Niffenegger is heading. And it's a strange, credibility defying turn that seems to have divided the critics.
But taking into account that I loved The Time Traveler's Wife, and that although elements of Her Fearful Symmetry don't always work, I enjoyed this new book equally, if not more. I'm not entirely sure why yet (I only finished it last night), but this was one of those books that I simply couldn't put down and actively looked forward to picking up again. It was even one of those books that I started to slow down with, so as to make it last that little bit longer. That doesn't happen too often!
Here a quick blurb:
Julia and Valentina Poole, two American identical mirror-image twins in their early twenties, are bequeathed an apartment in London overlooking Highgate Cemetery by their aunt, Elspeth, who was herself the identical twin of their mother, Edie. Elspeth and Edie have not had contact for more than two decades, and as a result, the twins have never met their mysterious benefactor.
Naturally delighted, and yearning for adventure, they readily accept the bequest, even though it comes with a couple of strange conditions, the main being that their mother and father are not to set foot in the apartment. They arrive, and soon spend their time becoming accustomed to their new home, and indeed their new country and surroundings.
The apartment is on the first floor. Underneath them lives Robert, a thirtysomething writer, and guide at the cemetery who was the lover of Elspeth, and who has not yet come to terms with her death. Above them lives Martin, an obsessive compulsive crossword compiler, whose Dutch wife, Marijke, has recently returned to her home country, unable to continue living with her husband’s ever deteriorating condition. And creeping into their home comes The Little Kitten Of Death, a snow-white feline visitor from nowhere who is soon adopted by the twins as a pet albeit without it’s consent.
And into this strange brew, another companion enters. Elspeth herself, who finds herself quietly haunting the twins’ apartment, observing them for the first time as they make their new lives, and unobtrusively occupying the locked desk drawer of the desk in her old office.

What makes Her Fearful Symmetry really sing is not the speculative supernatural stuff (although that's handled with the same kind of reducing something down to its nuts-and-bolts-aplomb that Niffenegger displayed with time travel), but the quite beautifully drawn characters that inhabit the house that sits next to Highgate Cemetery.
Robert, torn between his devotion to Elspeth's memory and his attraction to Valentina, who's almost half his age; Martin, the obsessive-compulsive who can no longer leave his flat, and whose wife leaves for Amsterdam after twenty-odd years of marriage when she finds she can no longer deal with his sickness; the twins themselves, Valentina, who decides she wants to free herself of the domineering shadow of Julia; Elspeth, who discovers that although she is dead, she can exert control over all of them; and Highgate Cemetary itself - so much so that I think next time I'm in London, I shall try to visit. Niffenegger draws it with such a rich palette that it sounds irresistable.

It's a fantastic, Autumnal kind of book, brimming with atmosphere and a sense of place, and populated with flawed characters that you genuinely hope make the right decisions. Martin, in partiular with his physical rituals and emotional tics and his flat filled with boxes is an acutely observed study of OCD, and his relationship with his wife and one of the twins is worth the price of the book alone. And indeed, if the direction the book takes in its last third seems a little too audacious for some, I didn't mind too much because I was already too invested in the characters.
It's a sublime bit of writing.