The Thousands

Back in 1999, The Blair Witch Project was unleashed on what now seems a touchingly innocent public. Ten cynical years later, Big Brother has ground away the novelty of watching lo-res, observational footage of smart-arses. And studio pictures come pre-packaged with online viral campaigns. Now everyone’s going bananas over microbudget horror flick Paranormal Activity as if those 10 years didn’t happen.

But while The Blair Witch Project was just shit, Paranormal Activity manages to be scary because it’s shit. There’s nothing special or original about it, but the shonky production values made the scares seem fresh. I gasped and shrieked like a wussbag. Still, I didn’t have trouble sleeping afterwards – although there was a ‘moment’ when the cat leapt onto my stomach in the dark.

Micah (Micah Sloat) is trying to record the malevolent presence that has plagued his girlfriend Katie (Katie Featherston) since she was eight. But he’s just antagonising the demon with his dick-swinging certainty that he can solve the problem. You can read lots into this about the global economic crisis stalking young big-spenders, men’s chauvinistic desire to exorcise their girlfriends’ sexual pasts, or even the Facebook generation’s desire to capture everything on film.