Worst – Paranormal Entity
Why did I throw an Asylum movie on here? To display one simple point: if you don’t know how to make a horror movie, found footage isn’t going to be your saving grace. If you don’t know Asylum’s schtick, let me explain briefly – they’re a production company that churns out low-budget copies of current famous movies hoping you’ll accidentally make the mistake of renting Snakes On A Train, Atlantic Rim, so on and so forth. Paranormal Entity is the obvious rip-off of Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity, directed by Shane Van Dyke (Asylum mainstay). Yes, these films are typically bad, but it quickly becomes horribly obvious that Shane knows nothing about horror, as he simply films a female actress for about an hour and a half.
Here’s the thing, Paranormal Activity increases intensity until a major payoff. It’s simple horror. The intensity increases, thing are obviously getting worse, and we’re hit with an ending most don’t see coming. This is horror and it’s done rather well. Shane doesn’t understand this, and he stretches the duller build-up material out for an entire movie, just moving furniture around and turning TVs on. This demon is the equivalent of a immature prankster, wasting your electricity and keeping you up all night with incessant thuds. Do you know what we call found footage movies with absolutely no entertainment value? Home movies. No, actually I take that back – most home movies have nostalgic value that actually are funny and engaging, letting us remember better times. Paranormal Entity is not that. Paranormal Entity is not funny. It’s not engaging. It’s just a horrid bit of found footage cinema that not even our ghost wants to be a part of, which is noticed when the turns the camera around any time he wants to cause some “havoc.”
To make a found footage movie, you first have to understand what makes a found footage movie watchable. Granted, it’s Asylum, but that doesn’t mean Paranormal Entity isn’t the perfect example of blind genre idiocy.