By now it’s no secret: I love scary movies.  And when I saw the Halloween decorations up at a nearby drug store I couldn’t help but get excited as my favorite time of year is quickly approaching.  Now John and I have some exciting things planned for the month of October, but we’ll let you know about them when the time is right.  In the meantime, I thought I might get my scare on and check out the latest demon-possession extravaganza The Last Exorcism.  So with a big old bucket of popcorn I sat in a very dark theater and dared this movie, “C’mon scare me bitch!”  Sadly, I’m not sure the movie heard me.  For as interesting as parts of this film are, in the end I was hardly scared. 

The film follows an Evangelical minister Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian).  Cotton has been preaching since he was 10 years old, and is much more of a showman than a real minister; he uses magic tricks in his sermons and often gets his parish to say amen to the most absurd things.  His father taught Cotton to perform exorcisms and he did his very first one when he was a young boy.  Cotton is making a documentary of his exorcisms to prove a point; not that exorcisms are real, but that they are in fact a hoax.  Cotton admits that nearly every one of his exorcisms was a fake and that he felt his services were more like that of a shrink than a real man of God.  But after reading about a young girl who died during an exorcism Reverend Marcus wants to expose the industry for what it is in order to save lives.  So Cotton takes his small crew with him on a trip to the backwoods of Louisiana, documenting his last exorcism.  Of course, strange things happen and Cotton must deal with his waning faith as he deals with what appears to be something very real. 

Directed by independent filmmaker Daniel Stamm, the movie was shot entirely on a handy cam and is presented as “found footage.”  By now we have all gotten used to the gimmick that is the handy cam movie.  Last year’s hit Paranormal Activity showed us how effective this style can be when you leave it alone and let the audience fill in the blanks.  Other film such as June 09 and The Blair Witch Project have fallen short of the mark as these films tend to reach for things and present the audience with ideas and notions that aren’t quite there.  This movie seems to suffer from this same fate as it struggles with being “found footage” and a Hollywood film. 
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[NOTE: Ryker's going to take over SHOCKtober! today. -John]

When I was a kid, my Dad would often let me stay up and watch the classic Universal horror movies with him.  They were on after midnight and we would eat popcorn and watch the classics.  Dracula, The Wolfman, Frankenstein, they all scrared the living bejesus out of me.  When I was older, movies like Halloween and Aliens scared me so bad I couldn’t sleep for weeks.  Since then I have come to enjoy the rush that comes from a really good scary movie.  It’s kinda like a really good roller coaster; the good ones stick with you for quite sometime and make you yearn for even scarier ones.   Sadly, most horror films I see aren’t so much scary as they are shocking or disturbing.  Don’t get me wrong, they are fun and all, but my quest for the really scary movies continued. 

That’s partly why I was so excited when I heard about Paranormal Activity, the new handheld camera horror film from Paramount.  All the reports that I had heard about the film was it was scary as all get out, and I am happy to report that these reports (at least for me) are TRUE! 

Paranormal Activity is the story of a young urban couple from San Diego who are having some strange occurances in their home.   Micah hopes to catch whatever is haunting his girlfriend Katie on film.  So he sets up a high-end camera up in their bedroom and lets it capture all night long to his PC.  Much like an episode of Ghost Hunters, we watch as the camera films events as they sleep the night away. 

Of course, things  intensify and Katie calls in a psychic to tell her what he senses.  It’s here we learn that Katie has had this haunting follow her since she was young and the psychic fears that they are not dealing with a poltergeist or mischievous spirit, but something far more dangerous.  He warns them not to get a Ouji board and not to get angry at each other, such activities may make things worse.  Of course neither of them quite follow this advice and the tension builds as what is caught on camera intensifies.  Director Oren Peli is so good at building this tension that the last fifteen minutes of this film was one of the most frightening experiences I have ever had in the movie theater. 

The obvious comparison that people are making right now is this the next Blair Witch Project.  While both use handheld cameras and had great viral marketing campaigns, the similarities stop right there.  Paranormal Activity doesn’t pretend to be some true story of events that happened; everybody knows that it’s a film.  The acting in Blair Witch was spotty at best and we never really felt like what we were watching was real.  Furthermore, the scares were few and far between and what payoffs we did get were, well, lame at best. 
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