Excessive Opinions

Peter Bradshaw,
Writing mainly due to your review on the film Paranormal Activity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/25/paranormal-activity-review

Are you serious?
Paranormal Activity was the most bland, boring, stupid, ridiculous film I’ve ever seen.
It wasn’t scary, the actors were mediocre At Best. The characters were annoying to the extent you ended up wanting them to die, I mean, a hotshot investment banker who doesn’t listen to his girlfriend, and a whiney girl who doesn’t even attempt to try and apply reason to anything.
The ending was rushed and ridiculous, death by cop? Really? That wasn’t good writing, it wasn’t even believable.
I can understand that it made a lot of money, I can understand making a film on such a small budget being impressive and I can even understand people going to watch it, the advertising was done well and the premise was interesting. What I can’t understand is how anyone could be scared by this film, let alone actually enjoy watching it. It was terrible.

And now they’re thinking about making a squeal? This film’s success was the upmost definition of using a look-in audience, people were curious but in the end it just wasn’t any good. I guess it does always just come down to the money, it made a lot and that jades people’s opinions automatically.

If they rewrote the story, got a more believable ending and added some real suspense, then improved the characters so you could actually relate, I might’ve enjoyed it. Don’t get me wrong, the premise was good, the advertising was good, even the directing wasn’t necessarily bad. It just wasn’t scary, to the point it that it just bored me.

My thoughts,
Jamie Burgoyne
White667@Googlemail.com - www.66Seven.co.uk

I just had to send a quick e-mail about this review, I honestly don’t see any reason why Paranormal Activity is getting good reviews past the fact it made money. I’ve not looked but there’s probably better student-films out there than this one; and almost definitely scarier ones. This isn’t an attack on Peter Bradshaw, his entitled to his opinions and there must be at least SOME PEOPLE out there who agree with him, just pointing out that I’m not one of them. On this film, anyway.

Unfortunately Peter doesn’t list an e-mail address on the site, which I find odd, so this has been sent to film.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk and letters@guardian.co.uk instead. Lets hope it finds him.