DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Try as Paramount might, they just can’t seem to completely screw up this movie, which is probably testament to just how good it is. So you can ignore their lame marketing campaign, which is using targeted late night screenings around the country to build interest and get people to go to a website and request that the movie come to their town. Reach a million total requests and we’ll release it all over! You’re in control! Uh, right. Unless Paramount execs are complete idiots (still a distinct possibility), they’ve been planning a wide release all along, and are just trying to goose the hype machine in advance of a well-timed Halloween weekend opening for this legitimately scary haunted-house thriller. You can also ignore the trailer, which has a certain nostalgic charm with its concentration on audience reaction rather than what’s on screen, but which also manages to give away of the biggest shock moments of the movie. Does no one know how to cut a decent trailer anymore?
The movie also narrowly avoided disaster when Paramount dumped plans to have director Oren Peli re-shoot the film with a glossier sheen and name actors on a budget considerably bigger than the scant $11,000 he spent producing the version that was purchased at the Slamdance Film Festival two years ago. Part of the film’s effectiveness lies in its low-budget, home movie quality, which is essential to the “found footage” aesthetic – an aesthetic it uses far better than most other films of this kind. They’ve also spent some extra cash on an added CGI final shot that is admittedly kind of dumb, but which still can’t ruin what’s come before. It obviously owes a great debt to Blair Witch, but is far scarier, mostly because Peli maintains greater control over the filming conditions. As much as it owes to Witch, and Robert Wise’s classic The Haunting, the overwhelming dread actually reminded me even more of the terrifying first hour of David Lynch’s Lost Highway. What Peli taps into nearly as well as Lynch does in that segment are deep-seated primal fears of the dark and our vulnerability in sleep.
The story is a simple haunting tale, about a young woman who has been periodically followed throughout her life by a malevolent spirit. It is now making its first reappearance in years, and her boyfriend buys a video camera to document the strange happenings. Peli builds tension by slowly ratcheting up the severity of the disturbances, and alternating the anxiety of daylight with the dread of night, forcing most of the scares into creepy static tripod shots of the couple’s bedroom while they sleep, and using the audience’s imagination against them to compensate for the lack of an effects budget. And for the most part, it works. One request, though: if you’re steely-willed enough not to be scared in the slightest, like the guy sitting in front of me last night, try not to pull a Max Cady and laugh hysterically and loudly, particularly at the poor girl just a few seats away who is screaming in terror. We get it, you’re not scared. Now shut up about it.
Currently only playing at Georgetown, but expanding beyond the one-show-a-day schedule it’s been on all week as of tomorrow. I’m betting on a wider release by Halloween weekend.
