Three Beats Two

The best thing I can say about Paranormal Activity 3, is that it's better than Paranormal Activity 2. Although, let's be honest the bar was really low.


As a stand alone film, I really enjoyed the first Paranormal Activity. It reminded me a lot of The Blair Witch Project, it was low budget, and anyone who shares a bed with someone will get just how creepy the idea of someone standing over you for four hours while you sleep really is.


Much like Saw however (again, a film I really liked), the sequels really detract from the original. In PA3, the younger versions of the female protagonists from PA1 and PA2 are experiencing more supernatural occurrences. Why they don't remember this or reference it in the first two films however is anyone's guess.


Apparently, PA3 did huge business in the States, so expect a PA4 next Halloween. 

The thing about adoption

A lot of families who are unable to have children naturally (as well as some that can) choose to adopt. My personal feeling on adoption is that it’s a wonderful thing and if you are noble enough to be able to love someone else’s child as if it were your own then you’re a great human being and there should be more of you in the world. The fact that so many children remain parentless throughout their youth is a tragedy that needs to be addressed. I am lucky enough to have two parents who I’m exceptionally close to, and one of them is not my “natural” mother, yet she has never made me feel like anything other than her own child and never treated me any differently or with any less love than she did her birth children. In a way, the difference has led me form an especially close bond with her, and all the traits I have that mirror hers firmly cements me on the side of “nurture” on the nature/nurture debate.

All this leads me to make clear the disclaimer that the below post is NOT making fun of adoption and my personal view is that more people should consider it.

That’s the serious part out of the way.

Last night I saw the film “Orphan”, which does for adoption what “The Amityville Horror” did for the housing market. Being a massive horror fan, a couple of equally enthusiastic horror junkies had recommended I check it out. And I’m glad that they did (although I’ll now blame the nightmares on them).

After their third child is stillborn, affluent couple Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga decide to adopt Esther, a nine-year-old they meet when visiting an all-girl orphanage. Seemingly charming and bright, after the initial highs of their first few weeks together wear off, events in their lives take a more sinister turn…

And that’s all I’ll say about the plot. I went into the film not knowing much more about it than I’ve written above, and enjoyed it all the more for it. Going back to the “classic” horror formula that I love, the film remembers that implied violence and the threat of violence are both always scarier than the violence itself. Unlike the torture porn of the Hostel series and Saw II through VII, the scares here come from the fact that Esther (played by a magnificent Isabelle Fuhrman) is genuinely creepy, and creates tension by notching up the freakiness of the events unfolding around the family.

Overall an extremely disconcerting and uncomfortable watch (and I mean uncomfortable in a good way, which all horror fans will understand). Whilst not a “scare-fest” the slow pace of the first half escalates extremely quickly in the second, with a couple of genuine “gut-punch” moments of suspense. The creepiness of Esther plays into the classic horror convention of the “other” being represented by a child, possibly executed best in The Omen and John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos.

If you’re a horror fan I can’t recommend this enough, however, returning to my original point, if you’re considering adopting a child of your own then stay as far away from this film as humanly possible.

It was my fault for watching

The other night I found myself too awake to sleep and too tired to do anything productive, so I found myself (for my sins) watching Saw VI on TV.


Now, I liked the first Saw film...at the time it was original and I didn't see the twist coming. Unfortunately with each new film it seems to have gone further and further down hill, and now is nothing more than torture porn.


I wouldn't mind so much if the films weren't just carbon copies of each other. Surely they're the very definition of banal cinema.


I do like the music though.