So last night I finally saw Paranormal Activity.

HOLY CRAP! It has been a very long time since any movie scared the living shit out of me like that. And it did it with a budget of all of five bucks. While there are a number of similarities that can be drawn between PA and Blair Witch Project, I think they are superficial at best. Blair Witch really only had the one scary image at the end, almost nothing actually happened on screen. Paranormal Activity let almost everything happen on screen, and contains a LARGE number of images that are going to stick with me for a very long time.

And the economy of both budget and craft that were used for PA were very impressive. Somebody needs to beat Michael Bay about the head and neck (and junk) with this movie.

Bigger, louder, and more special effects does not equal good film making. Not when a movie made for $20 genuinely scared the crap out of me, without using cheap GOTCHAS.

And I watched it in a room with the lights on.

I thought it had its moments of creepiness, and I liked that there was actually a developing story behind the haunting.

Spielberg's ending is way scarier than the original.

Nothing nothing nothing has ever quite spooked me as much as "I can feel it breathing on me." ::whoosh:: Yeah, it's scariness is a creepy scary, but it was very effective on me. The J-horror-esqe stepping out of bed to stand catatonic was powerful. S used to do things like that in the night, albiet for entirely different reasons. And I agree that Speilberg's ending was far superior, I would have been interested to see some combination of the two - Katie getting out of bed to stand over Micah (that was SUPER creepy), going downstairs, we hear the horrible scream from Speilberg's ending, she thumps back up, throws Micah into the camera, crawls in animal-like, and then slits her own throat for the camera, smiling a demon smile.

But really just to see how that idea would play

I don't know whose ending I saw.

In the original ending, Katie gets out of bed, stands catatonic for a bit, goes downstairs, screams, Micah runs downstairs, we hear more screaming, Katie comes back up with the kitchen knife and slits he own throat for the camera.

In Speilberg's ending, Katie gets out of bed, stands over Micah, goes downstairs, scream, Micah rushes down, screams, thumping back up the stairs, Micah's gets thrown into the camera, Katie crawls in all animal-like, turns demon-face, cut to a title saying Micah's body was found, Katie's whereabouts are unknown.

Sean, I think that combination would have been neat too. Because the scariest part of Spielberg's ending was her throwing Micah at the camera. The demon lunge at the camera was just sort of standard.

javachik, I'm pretty sure theatres only showed Spielberg's ending, which I basically described above. The original ending had Katie walking back to the bedroom, presumably having killed Micah downstairs, and slitting her throat in front of the camera. The director's cut apparently has a third ending that just sounds weird where Katie stands in front of the camera for DAYS until the cops show up, and she goes down and gets shot by them or something.

Weird. I saw that third ending. I didn't even know about the other two.

Thanks! I might have actually preferred the original ending. But I did enjoy the movie a lot.

More than anything, it was the actors that sold me. Superb performances. Especially Katie.

Reading everyone's white font has convinced me that I NEVER NEED TO SEE this movie. Ever. It is the type of creepy movie that will freak me out FAR too effectively.