Film | Paranormal Activity (2009)

“It’s not a ghost. What is it?”

Oren Peli’s first stab at film-making is a fun, truly frightening experience in the style of The Blair Witch Project.

Meet Micah and Katie. They’re your normal (if not, annoying) young couple, living together and “engaged to be engaged”. But something paranormal is happening to them – they’re being haunted by a malevolent spirit. Intent to capture said spirit on film, Micah purchases a hand-held camera to record movements in the house.

It’s this camera that tells the story. Each night they sleep, Micah sets up the camera in the bedroom, positioned (teasingly) to overlook the hallway. In their waking hours, it’s following their movements. Much of the non-still filming is done by Micah.

Film | Would you let this vampire in?

If there are two things that up the creepy factor in a horror movie, it’s children and an uber clean and spartan, homely setting. Swedish director Tomas Alfredson added these two ingredients to his new vampire horror movie Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in).

It’s a combination of fellow Swede Lille Hallstrom’s My Life As a Dog and Takashi Shimizu’s The Grudge. There’s more than good horror to this movie — it’s also a coming-of-age and romance. Let the Right One In is based on a book of the same title by John Ajvide Lindqvist (who also wrote the screenplay).