You might go online every now and then and check out the latest movie trailers in an effort to see if its worth it to drop some hard earned change on a good flick. Some trailers are so enticing that hoards of people come flocking after finding the closest time and date of their desired movie. However some trailers can be horribly misleading and often only show the best parts luring thousands if not millions of people to a gigantic money pit. I'm not proud to say it, but much like the one million people who requested paranormal activity to come to their hometown I was drawn in hook line and sinker with a wonderfully over produced trailer that borderlines on false advertisement. I hadn't seen a good scary movie in a long time and I was moderately interested in a low budget blair witch esque film that appeared to be well made. Man was I ever wrong. Warning there are spoilers ahead, but you'll be glad you read this and saved yourself the time and money you would have wasted watching this film.

So here's the story. You have Micah (an american dude which for some reason has the german name Michelle) and his girlfriend Katie. Katie claims shes had some type of spirit or ghost or something to that effect following her since she was a child. Micah who is incredibly interested in the idea of investigating and finding out what exactly it is decides to set up a video camera to try and capture this phenomena on tape. After roughly the first ten to fifteen minutes into the movie its apparent that not only was this movie not what I thought I was looking for, but there was some really bad acting to boot. I was pretty young when I watched the blair witch project but I remember quite well being pretty convinced by the actors in the film. I even remember many people thinking that it was a real documentary until the cast came on the Jay Leno show. I was not at all convinced by either of these Actors. In fact I can't imagine someone sitting in the theater watching these people and being convinced that they were for real. There was no chemistry at all between the two. Even their tiny arguments hinted at a false sense of realism and when Katie tried explaining her side of the story you could blatantly flat out tell she was lying. Either she was lying or reading directly from the script. Everything from her body language to the movement of her eyes and her facial expressions screamed I'm an amateur actress and you should feel stupid if your fooled by me. She just looked plain uncomfortable trying to maintain a straight face. Micah however is no better. Not only is he not convincing but hes just plain obnoxious and as the story progresses it gets much worse.

So fast forward to the first event of the video taping. After Micah analyzes the tape he finds that the bedroom door moves slightly. Slightly enough that both of them become more interested in the investigation and decide to contact a "psychic" to come and analyze the situation. So the psychic makes a home visit and sadly enough hes the best actor in the entire movie. He tells Katie and Micah that there is definitely a presence in the house and he has a strong feeling that its linked to Katie in one way or another. He then claims that because hes a psychic there isn't much he can do about the situation but then refers them to a friend of his that's a renowned "demonologist" that should be able to clarify the situation a bit more and maybe be able to help. Micah playing the adult with the maturity and intelligence of a 12 year old asks if it would be a good idea to film the so called demon or maybe even contact it with a Ouija board. The psychic tells him that is absolutely a terrible idea and that they should both refrain from attempting to make any contact as it could be dangerous. Now if you weren't already grinding your teeth in frustration from the bad acting and poor story line setup here's where the movie takes a turn for the worse. After the psychic leaves Micah somehow convinces Katie who's been tormented since she was a child to continue filming. After a few more arguments and an undulating and aggravating dragging on to the story a few more events occur. Each one more serious in the fact that the spirit appears to be gaining strength and causing more potential to harm each time. After everything appears to be getting worse and worse our two heroes (or victims or whatever you want to call them) find themselves in a precarious situation of seemingly real danger. Using the word seemingly is being generous but I guess they deserve the benefit of the doubt. Micah being the genius that he appears to be decides to go get a Ouija board, but not one of those fake plastic Milton Bradley ones he gets a real wooden Ouija board. Now I'm no expert on the Occult but if for some reason I felt that there was a Demon or a Poltergeist following me the last thing I would want to do is contact it... Especially after seeking counsel who overtly sited that this was a bad idea that could be DANGEROUS. Micah follows through against the wishes of Katie and after an endless amount of fake bickering and beating around the bush the situation escalates to the point where no sane person would want to live. None of this is believable because I don't think that anyone would be dumb enough to push this as far as it went assuming that the situation was real which made the movie even more unrealistic. If anyone was seriously having a problem like this they would either A)seek professional help or B) Vacate the area despite receiving counsel not to leave.

Paranormal Activity is a bad movie. It's not scary at all. It's filled with bad and unrealistic acting. It has a morbid poorly written storyline. It has a bad ending. The special effects are mediocre at best. After buying Gas, a movie ticket, popcorn, and a soda I was out 25 dollars.  After you add in driving time, about two and half hours of my life were wasted.  I found myself thinking Even if I had downloaded this movie on the internet and watched it for free I would still feel like I got ripped off....