Have you ever seen the film Paranormal Activity?  It was released around 2007 and since then there have been about a million sequels.  Ok, six actually.  That’s just six, not six million.  And there’s always a point the filmmakers reach, a sort of ‘critical mass’, after they’ve completed a certain number of sequels (the exact number is not clear but it’s when it becomes apparent to the general public that they’ve run out of ideas but still believe there’s cash to be squeezed out of the ‘project’), that the collection of films ceases to be referred to as a ‘series’ and they suddenly become a ‘franchise’. And for anyone with even a scintilla of self-respect, it’s usually best to avoid the sequels in a franchise like you would the Coronavirus; that is, to stay indoors, self-isolate, get inoculated against all known viral diseases, especially those emanating from Asia, and wait until the film is no longer showing at your local flea-pit.

Anyway, Paranormal Activity is a film in the ‘supernatural horror’ genre about things that go bump in the night.  And it’s typical of a horror/slasher movie in that everyone in it does the exact opposite of what any normal person would do in similar circumstances. That is, in a situation where you’re quite likely to die and it is perfectly obvious to everyone else with a modicum of brain power that you’re about to die, you continue to act fairly cool and casual, like the fear of impending death is evidently overrated.

Gogglebox

Well, I was watching a programme called Gogglebox on Channel 4 a few weeks back (this is UK TV) and for those of you not familiar with it, it’s a programme where you effectively watch other people watching the telly, on the telly.  There’s a bit more to it than that but that’s the basic premise.  The entertainment comes in the programmes they watch and what they have to say about them.  If they were just watching the TV, bored shitless, it would be a dull programme but some of the people are fairly entertaining, quite often when they’re not trying to be.  Anyway, the film Paranormal Activity came on (I should point out at this juncture that I’d never seen it and had only ever seen clips from it) and some of the Gogglebox fraternity were clearly uncomfortable with watching it, whereas others merely laughed at the implausible nature of the story.  This is how it goes…

Synopsis

A young couple move into a house and soon after strange events begin to take place; strange events otherwise known as ‘paranormal activity’.  And straight off the bat there they go, they don’t move out, they decide to film the activity on camcorders as proof of what is happening.  The fact that most of the film is captured on camcorders means the budget of the film was somewhere around $15,000.  Which is less than most films spend on catering for a week.  And considering it took about $200m at the box office, that’s not a bad return.  You may recall back in 1999 (about eight years before this film) that a similar film, the Blair Witch Project, hit the screens.  It divided audiences in much the same way as Paranormal Activity but Blair Witch (a film I have seen by the way) was very much the forerunner of camcorder/found footage horror genre, where the camcorder gives the eerie sense of first person realism that is lost in the Dolby 5.1 world of THX and Panavision.

Somehow, they’d been swindled and they wanted a warning plastered across the posters in the foyer pronouncing, “This film does not include a THX soundtrack or Panavision film shots of any kind whatsoever.”

The Blair Witch

In Blair Witch, a group of students, for a school project, decide to borrow a camcorder, hike up into the woods on the edge of town, camp out for a few nights and try to find and film the infamous Blair Witch.  Unfortunately, they do find her, or rather she finds them.  But much like Paranormal Activity, you never see the witch and everything is left to your imagination.  And it’s here that films like Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch divide people into two distinct categories: those that can’t sleep for a month because their mind is working overtime filling in the horrifying blanks, and those that can’t sleep for a month because their mind is working overtime on calculating the horrifying amount of time and money they’ve wasted on what they would probably refer to as a load of new age claptrap.  Some people couldn’t believe they had paid to go to the cinema to watch somebody’s “camcorder catastrophes”.  After all, they had paid for THX/Panavision and they wanted THX/Panavision.  Somehow, they’d been swindled and they wanted a warning plastered across the posters in the foyer pronouncing, “This film does not include a THX soundtrack or Panavision film shots of any kind whatsoever.”  But they still wouldn’t have been happy because they were paying the full whack THX/Panavision Premier League film price for a non-THX/Panavision Division 3 film, albeit a good one.  And they have a point.  Perhaps the price of the cinema ticket should reflect the overall budget of the film.  So, for Paranormal Activity for example, which cost $15,000 to produce, if the cost of the cinema ticket was $1, then for a Marvel Film costing $200,000,000, the price of the ticket would have to be $20,000.  I feel sure spiralling production budgets would be brought to an abrupt standstill if this was the case.

Abnormal Activity

Back on Gogglebox, they showed a clip of Paranormal Activity where the couple are asleep and the camcorder is recording away and it’s 4am, when suddenly a shadow appears against the door and then moves away.  And this is where the Paranormal Activity moves into the territory of Abnormal Activity.  Because what we the viewer understands, is that there is an invisible demon stalking the woman (it’s always a woman, and really, what has she done, other than be a woman, to deserve this?) but elementary school physics tells us that if you’re invisible, you’re going to have some difficulty in casting a shadow.  Some would say your chances are next door to impossible.  After all, Dracula didn’t even have a reflection and he had a physical presence.  But supposing an invisible demon could cast a shadow, you’d still need a fairly powerful light source i.e. the sun, to be able to generate a shadow strong enough to be seen and recorded on a low definition domestic camcorder, in the dark, at 4 am with the lights off.  So, as the film watcher, you let that go and ignore the complete implausibility of it because, hey, it’s entertainment after all.  But then the demon grabs the woman’s ankle and drags her out of bed.  She’s on the floor before she wakes up screaming.  Her husband has clearly been on the JD & Coke because he stays asleep the whole time.  Either that or he’s thinking “Here she goes again, the attention seeker. Why doesn’t she just make a TikTok like any normal person?” ADHD really has got a lot to answer for in the 21^st Century.

 

Do Juvenile Demons Have Primary Carers?

Anyway, this is where the demon, even though he’s invisible, starts to exhibit some signs of psychological trauma, and this first manifests itself in the form of shyness, particularly in front of the cameras because he has to drag the woman out of the room and away from the camera, before he starts doing whatever it is invisible demons do with people they have captured.  What the film fails to explain is why he is a.) shy, b.) invisible, and c.) following the woman about? Also, why does he decide to ‘kick off’ only after they’ve set up cameras to capture the activity?  It seems to me that this particular demon is not only suffering from abandonment issues, he’s also bullying, manipulative, and has probably lived in fear since an early age as this fear has finally rendered him invisible.  His parents were probably abusive towards him and most likely each other, leading him to bully and abuse others to gain some ‘power’ in his lonely and emotionally destructive life.  Furthermore, perhaps he was forced, as a juvenile demon, to perform entertaining skits, on camera, for the merriment of his parents and siblings.  Perhaps, as a survival technique he developed an irrational fear of film equipment and so, the couple, dragging out the Panasonic handheld with lowlight attachment, was just one step too far. 

The Krays

If you had lived in the East End of London in the 60’s and you were sitting in a pub and the Krays stormed in (The Krays were violent, East End criminals) brandishing knives, knuckledusters and guns, and they proceeded to knock people about, if you had your wits about you, you would leave the establishment as quickly as your feet could carry you.  You definitely would not go get a camera, put it on a tripod and start filming the shenanigans, as ‘evidence’, since that would clearly draw the attention of the perpetrators of the crime, to you, in this case the mindbogglingly unpleasant Kray twins. 

The Problem With Filming The Invisible

And so it is with invisible demons.  They’re invisible for a reason.  They don’t want to be on film.  In effect you’re asking for trouble, setting a camera up.  You’re asking the demon to prove himself, to unlock his own demons, the demons of his lost childhood; unpick the tormenting, the trauma, the emotional turmoil of being isolated, unwanted and ridiculed.  You’re asking the demon, inviting him even, to lay bare this trauma and it’s clear, in my experience at least, that demons don’t need a second invitation to kick off when they don’t like something.  Because demons, by their very nature are violent and emotional creatures.  And they’re quick to anger too because they live in perpetual fear of ridicule.  As a defence mechanism they have discovered if they throw people about a bit and kill the odd person now and again (much like the Krays), others tend to stop viewing them as a source of entertainment, they stop ridiculing them and begin to fear them. 

Further Abnormal Scenes

In another Paranormal Activity scene, the couple end up outside the bedroom again, so we can’t see what’s going on but we can hear all sorts of unpleasant noises.  Noises even more unpleasant than say, the sound of your Wi-Fi router continuously rebooting.  Yes, that unpleasant.  And here’s the thing.  If you’ve set up cameras to capture paranormal activity and then the paranormal activity occurs in a blind spot, away from the prying eye of the lens, wouldn’t you move them the next night to ensure the blind spots were eradicated?  Also, how much evidence do you need to collate, to prove paranormal activity is occurring?  How much paranormal activity constitutes enough?  I would like to think being dragged out of bed by an invisible demon would probably suffice and I’d also think that now I have the evidence I can leave.  And one last thing, if you are being dragged out of bed at night screaming, how well would you sleep the next night?  Extremely well or not at all?  Probably the second one, so when the paranormal activity kicks off again guess what happens?  That they’re really jumpy and they’re therefore wide awake in seconds?  Not exactly.  They’re both snoring their heads off as if they’ve had a hard night partying.  This time the man gets thrown across the room at the camera (I did tell you the demon didn’t like being filmed).  Then the woman comes crawling in and she looks into the lens with demon eyes and demon teeth.  So, the demon has managed to possess her mind, expunge her powers of free will and turn her into a demon too.  But she’s not invisible though.  Which is handy, because you can’t look into a camera with demon eyes and demon teeth if you’re invisible.

But I’m making this film out to be a load of old nonsense which, in a sense it is but of course it plays on our own basic fear as humans.  The fear of the unknown.  And if you place the unknown in your house at night when you’re at your most vulnerable i.e. asleep, and the unknown is additionally both violent and invisible, us humans are on a hiding to nothing.  And we’re going to use the bathroom quite soon.  And probably more than once too. 

Monster Jobs

There was a cartoon series that used to appear in the London Evening Standard newspaper years ago.  It was called The Far Side and it was by Gary Larson.  In the single frame cartoons, Larson often depicted animals, insects, dinosaurs, aliens etc. in the middle of mundane human activities.  In one, entitled Monster Jobs, a married couple, both monsters, are in the kitchen of their suburban house, the female monster is wearing a ‘pinny’ and glasses and is pouring a cup of coffee.  The male monster is sitting at the table, reading the paper and looking at his watch and saying, “Dang! Look at the time! And I gotta be in little Billy Harrison’s closet before nightfall.”  Paranormal (or Abnormal) Activity is merely an extension of this idea, as was the Pixar film, Monsters Inc.  That, being an demon is a job and it has to be done in the way your boss wants it done, otherwise you’ll get demoted to some other menial task.  Because the question I keep coming back to and have no answer for, is why, if you’re an invisible demon with other worldly, supernatural powers, do you have to wait until 4am to do your work?  Why can’t you just throw people at cameras during the day?  Why can’t you turn women into demons on the first day you rock up at their place and then move on to the next haunting?  Why do you have to mess about for a few weeks first?   Unless it is just like Monster Jobs and you’ve been put on the night shift, or the graveyard shift, for that week.  I like to imagine them, Larson-style, in the office, sorting out the rota for the week.

Demon Inc. Offices

Manager: “OK, first up, Invisible Demon.”

Invisible Demon: “Hello?”

Manager: “Where are you?  I can’t see you.”

Invisible Demon: “Er, I’m invisible? That’s….sort of the point?”

Manager: “Yes, well raise your hand then.”

Silence…

Manager: “Well laddie? Raise your hand!  Come on, don’t be shy.”

Disembodied Hand: (whispering) “Shall I do it instead?”

Invisible Demon: (whispering) “Knock yourself out.”

A disembodied hand appears above the chairs and hovers in the air for a moment.  The other monsters start to snigger and stifle laughter.

Manager: “Yes, ha ha, very funny.  Come on, settle down everyone.  Well? Raise your hand.”

Invisible Demon: “I am raising it but it’s sort of invisible too.”

Manager: “Hmm…well ok, that didn’t really help.  Can you do something else then, so I know where you are?”

Invisible Demon: “Like what?”

Manager: “Like, I dunno, throw a lamp across the room?”

SMASH!

Manager: “Yes, that’s better.  Ok, so you’re on nights this week.”

Invisible Demon: “Nights?  Again?”

Manager: “Now stop complaining.  We all have to do nights.”

Invisible Demon: “Yes, but I’m invisible.  It sort of renders my invisibility as pointless.  If it’s dark they can’t see me. If it’s light they can’t see me either.  Why can’t Evil Devil Face do nights?”

Manager: (consults clipboard) “He did nights last week.  It’s your turn so stop getting on at me.  I don’t make the rules, I just enf-“

Invisible Demon: “-Enforce them.  Yes, we know.  You’ve told us a hundred times already.”

Manager: “Don’t be impertinent.  Now, you’re going to be at….(checks schedule on a clip board)..ah yes, at Katie and Micah’s in San Diego.  The address and everything is on the Database.  Now, you need to impregnate the woman and throw the man around a bit.”

Evil Devil Face: “Good luck with that one homie, what with your invisible dick and all.”

Invisible Demon: “Is this really necessary?  Can I make a complaint to HR about sexual harassment in the workplace?”

Manager: “Children, stop it now.  Also, you need to prolong the attack, so I want you there all week.”

Invisible Demon: “Good grief.  All week?  Look, I can go there right now. I’ll top the bloke, shag the bird – job done.  Then I can take the rest of the week off and get a tan down the coast.”

Manager: “You could but you know it’s not professional to rush these types of jobs.  You have to build the tension first.  It wouldn’t do our reputation much good if you’re all ‘wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am’ in and out in 5 minutes.”

Evil Devil Face: “5 minutes? Him? Some hope.  He’s what we call a starter/finisher.  Starts and finishes all in one go!  Ha! ha!” Suddenly he stops laughing. “Ok, what are you doing?”

Invisible Demon: “I’m giving you daggers with my invisible eyes.”

Evil Devil Face: “You give me the willlies when you do that…well you would, if you had one!”

Manager: “Yes, thank you.   So, no speed jobs and remember the old adage, “If they’re a-courting, don’t rush a haunting.”

Invisible Demon: (slowly shaking his invisible head in disbelief) “I have no idea what that means.”

Slimy Gorgon: “Doesn’t even rhyme properly.”

Spirit With No Legs: “I think it’s just a saying, you know, that’s easy to remember.”

Invisible Demon: “No shit Sherlock.”

Spirit With No Legs: “Don’t you get on at me, I was only trying to help.  I didn’t put you on nights.”

Invisible Demon: “Fair point.  Sorry.”

Manager: “Now, we can sit here bickering, or we can get to work.  The sooner you get started, the-“

All: “-Sooner it gets done.”

Manager: “Exactly.  Now off you go.  And….Happy Haunting!”

Disembodied Hand: “Does he have to say that every time?”

Man With Exploded Head: “What a nonce.”

Thing That Smells A Bit Like Old Ladies Knickers: “Wanker.”

Manager: “I can still hear you and you can all do nights if you prefer.”

All: “Sorry boss.”

So that’s how I imagine the Invisible Demon ended up doing what he did in Paranormal Activity.  You have to remember you’re watching a film and to do so you have to suspend reality for a while and in doing that you have to suspend the reality of human interaction.  The characters in the film aren’t real, the story isn’t real and so they don’t react in a realistic manner.  Like using common sense for example. 

Having said all that, the film made a lot of cash, so the film makers were doing something right and I have to be honest, if I wake up at 4 am I now think twice about putting my foot out of the bedclothes, you know, just in case the poor old Invisible Demon got dumped with the Graveyard Shift and he’s not happy about it.