Paranormal Cash-in

So Paranormal Activity has been a long wait on Netflix for many moons, but I noticed something called Paranormal Entity was available so I decided to give it a go. It arrived on Wednesday & since SVU didn't have any guest stars I gave a crap about (Lena Olin? really?), I popped it into the laptop as a nightcap.

This is one of them Asylum joints, quickly whipped up to cash-in on some of that PA money...and it kinda shows. The premise is amom and her two grown-ass kids are noticing, uh, paranormal activity in their home. The son decided to document the events with a series of cameras. Well, eventually, the daughter & a paranormal investigator are murdered in the house. The son is arrested for the crimes, but commits suicide while in jail. A year later, someone found the footage we are about to see. Don't worry. That will not be the first nod to Blair Witch we get.

The footage covers about 25 days in October. There's no point in going into a whole lot of detail. The entity starts out as a prankster who throw glasses form the kitchen cupboard when no one's around, turns the TV on in the middle of the night & crankcalls the house. The family sets up cameras to capture occurrences (which only happen at night apparently). In interviews, we learn that mom has been"talking" to her dead husband. We're told the entity is mostly focused on Sam, the 18-yer old sister & it's hinted that it's some kind of sexual demon, so they are pretty sure it's not Dad's ghost.

The brother walks around all the time sticking a camera in his mom's & Sam's faces. He is mostly skeptical of the ghost theory. Eventually, the entity steps up his game and goes from prankster to mean bully & psychological predator. He knocks over Dad's urn and walks through the ashes. He then leaves ashy footprints on the ceiling of the house. He also continuously knocks a cross that hangs over Sam's bed off the wall & yanks the covers off her while she sleeps. At one point, the entity makes mom write Maron on a piece of paper while she's sleepwalking.

All this time, the family is trying to reach this doctor who is apparently some sort of paranormal investigator, but he's on vacation. Eventually the brother (who is played by the director or writer or cameraman or something) sends Mom & Sam to a hotel while he tries to capture some of what's going on in the house. He goes all MacGuyver, placing bells on fishing line around the house. When a belll rings, he goes to investigate and gets scared by a moving chair. Then Mom & Sam call to say the entity has followed them to the hotel, so he orders them home.

I'm going on llonger than I'd planned about this movie. It wasn't very good. The acting was pretty bad with horrible ad libbing and it had a creepy vibe, but for the reasons they wanted. The brother's attention to his sister is a bit...unhealthy. On more than one occasion, he comes across her half-dressed or undressed & doesn't turn the damn camera off. Nevermind the scene where she's attacked in the bathtub.

I had heard of Asylum and its ilk before, but I'd never seen one. I can see how these might be fun to mock if you've seenthe movie they're ripping off. I just hope having seen this mess first, it won't wreck the real thing for me.