If the Ghostbusters theme song doesn’t give you an impression of what the movie is like, I don’t know what will.

In my undergraduate Monster Lit. class, we discussed how every type of monster found in serious horror literature/film inevitably ends up in a comedy. One of our biggest examples for that class was Shaun of the Dead. To me, Ghostbusters is the ghost/haunting equivalent of that movie–part parody, part homage, wrapped up in an entertaining story.

Ghostbusters takes everything we’ve looked at in this class and puts a comedic spin on it, and that’s where I think its true brilliance lies. Supernatural occurrences, paranormal investigations, spirit manifestations, and possession are all played for laughs. We’ve got a team trying to fight ghosts (taking a much more active approach than the groups in The Haunting of Hill House or Hell House), a building with a terrible secret, and I’ll even give Ghost Story some credit for a change by pointing out that the ultimate antagonist is a shape-shifting force of destruction. The setup works for a straight ghost story, if not for the jokes and general silliness.

It even shares some of the incredible, odds-defying optimism of Scrooge’s redemption in A Christmas Carol. Let’s face it, Venkman and his colleagues don’t exactly inspire confidence as potential saviors of the world. Venkman in particular comes off as a con artist half the time, likable though he may be. The Ghostbusters might have the technology they need, but when it comes to actual plans, they usually make it up as they go along.

Yet it works!

Even when everything seems to be against them, they pull through and come out victorious against the forces of darkness. Considering a majority of ghost stories end in tragedy, the happy ending alone makes Ghostbusters stand out as a lighter look at the genre. And it’s still a ghost story. Its ghosts are even credible threats to the protagonists and the people around them.

All right, but let’s assume you’re reading this not because you care how Ghostbusters fits into the grand tradition of ghost stories, but because you want to know if it’s a good movie. Yes! I love this movie! It’s got a little spookiness, a little adventure, and a lot of comedy. Re-watching it for this class made me laugh out loud a few times. The pacing felt a little off to me (I remembered the ending as being much shorter than it was), but it was still very enjoyable. And Sigourney Weaver is always great.

Now, after everything I’ve rambled about this semester, it wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t get in another video game reference: what’s the video game equivalent of Ghostbusters? The original Luigi’s Mansion, of course! When that game first came out, I couldn’t get enough of it. I still love it (and lament what its sequel did). Until today, though, I never really thought of it as a Ghostbusters reference–but it is! While it serves as its own parody/homage to survival horror games, Luigi’s Mansion is filled with shout-outs to this movie.

Of course, horror and comedy are closely linked, so maybe it’s no surprise that everything ends up with a comedy version eventually. And it’s not like I can complain–not only do I love stories like Ghostbusters, but I even wrote my own zombie comedy (which you can get for free from now until January 1, remember) and… comedic Resident Evil and Silent Hill fanfiction…

To Ghostbusters fans, I’d also recommend Jonathan Stroud’s new YA series Lockwood & Co., which centers around a team of young ghost hunters who, like the Ghostbusters, defeat and capture ghosts through a series of disasters.

For that matter, if you’ve searched in vain for a humorous take on demons, where have you been? Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens!

Ghostbusters is a great, funny movie and a wonderful way to end this course. After so many stories about haunted houses, deadly spirits, and possession, it’s nice to end the semester on a positive note:

“I ain’t afraid of no ghost!”

The last time I watched a movie for class, the ending destroyed what was otherwise a fairly entertaining story, I mentioned that endings matter. Now I’m going to talk about how motivations matter, because when I finished Paranormal Activity, the biggest question I had was “why?” (There will be spoilers in this post.)

First: why is Micah such a jerk?

Not only do character motivations matter, but characters themselves matter. It’s okay to have some jerks in the cast, but it’s nice to have likable protagonists, especially if you want the audience to care about what happens to them. I didn’t like Micah. At all. He started out annoying, then he became a total jerk, and as more supernatural stuff happened, he just got worse and worse. It was hard not to feel like he cared more about getting some awesome paranormal footage and/or proving he’s the big macho man who can punch out a demon than he cared about Katie’s well-being… or his own.

Micah makes the husband in Grave’s End look like a saint. At least that guy started out as a skeptic and then goes into denial. I can feel some sympathy for the apparent idiocy of a character who really doesn’t believe anything supernatural is going on.

But Micah?? At first, there are a few shades of skepticism to him, and it’s implied he doesn’t really believe Katie or take her seriously. That ends pretty fast. Before long, he convinced there really is some sort of demonic entity in the house, yet he still doesn’t take it seriously. He:

1. Refuses to let Katie call the demonologist because he’s so arrogant he thinks he can take on the demon himself.
2. Decides a Ouija Board would be the best way to communicate with the being even after the paranormal investigator specifically warns him not to try because it’ll open the door and make things worse.
3. Taunts the demon for not doing anything too bad. (I’ll get to the demon’s motivations in a little bit, but seriously, if you’re haunted by a demon that just likes to turn on faucets, open doors, and stomp around… be happy. What kind of idiot gets upset that things aren’t worse?)
4. Keeps the camera on constantly for no clear reason except that he really likes to use the camera. (While insisting this will somehow help the problem… because having your demon on tape will be useful when you refuse to call in anyone for help.)
5. Brings a Ouija Board into the house despite the previous warning and promising Katie he wouldn’t. (As soon as he promised he wouldn’t buy one, I knew he was the sort of nitwit would would take the exact wording as an excuse to borrow one.)

There’s more. I’m sure of it. Micah spends the entire movie being an unlikable jerk, which would be bad enough if their lives weren’t at risk. Even toward the end, he’s not really taking it as seriously as he should.

In short, I wanted to punch Micah for most of the movie, and kinda hoped he would get first-hand proof of how dangerous the demon was, so the movie didn’t exactly make me concerned for this character’s welfare.

But at least I was concerned for Katie, which brings me to my second “why.” Why does she always cave to Micah? She seems to realize he’s a raging idiot, yet even after she makes him promise to abide by her rules when it comes to the camera, the footage goes on pretty much as it did before, so…. what was the point of that?

She gets mad when she sees him with the Ouija Board, but she didn’t really take any steps to get it out of the house, despite knowing the danger. She just orders Micah to get rid of it. Because he’s proven so reliable in the past.

Reverend Trask would have livened this movie up.

Katie finally takes some positive action when she decides to call the demonologist, but when he’s unavailable and the investigator from earlier says he can’t help, she just gives up. She doesn’t look up another demonologist or call a priest or anything. And when Micah reads stuff on the Internet that says an exorcism might make things worse, she just accepts it.

She’s a passive character, one who always reacts to the actions of others. In a way, this reminds me of Vicki from Dark Shadows (the TV show, not the movie), but at least Vicki was surrounded by a cast of proactive characters. All Katie has is Micah.

And the demon.

This question of character motivations doesn’t just end with the human characters. My third “why” is why does the demon do the things it does?

I complained that the events in The Amityville Horror felt random and disconnected, and I praised Grave’s End for having a neat explanation for the central supernatural activity. Even The Others has a solid reason for why the “ghosts” in the house do the things they do. Paranormal Activity lines up more with The Amityville Horror in that the demon’s motivations are even less understandable than Micah’s.

Assuming its ultimate goal was to possess Katie… why did it do most of the things it did? Did it need her to be at a certain level of fear? Was it amusing to the demon to flicker the lights or make loud noises? Did it pinpoint Micah as just the sort of moron who would ignore the expert and bring in an Ouija Board… which it could then conveniently leave a message on even though Micah never actually used the board, and write what may or may not have been “Diane” (or… Di-anne, since he said there were two Ns) in the hopes that Micah would do the exact Google search needed to find the demon’s previous victim and therefore not call an exorcist?

Even if the demon did use an insane Batman Gambit like that, why did it want them to find the photo in the attic? Why did it spend the first part of the movie going upstairs in the dark, then decide it needed the light on? Why did it develop a shadow partway through?

And why, since it clearly understood what the camera was, didn’t it try to stop the filming? Did the demon just really want to be a star?

Outside of all these complaints, Paranormal Activity wasn’t all bad. The “found footage” style lent it a sense of realism which annoyed me at first but gradually increased my immersion. There were a few genuinely creepy moments and some good scares.

But I doubt I’ll watch it again.