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Paranormal Activity: Motivations Matter

Movies and Shows, Reviews, RIG: The Haunted 10 Responses »

Nov 192014

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:

Refuses to let Katie call the demonologist because he’s so arrogant he thinks he can take on the demon himself.
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.
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?)
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.)
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.

Vicki (Victoria Winters) from the original Dark Shadows

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.

Grave’s End: Better Than Amityville in Every Way

Books, Reviews, RIG: The Haunted 6 Responses »

Nov 142014

As you probably know, I was pretty dissatisfied with The Amityville Horror. I was willing to cut it some slack because it was presented as a true story, and even if it’s a fraud, it had a “here are the facts” style that didn’t work well for a horror story. Well, I’m not sure I should even give it that much credit. You see, the next book I read for class is also supposed to be a true story. Elaine Mercado’s Grave’s End is a better story than The Amityville Horror in every way.

I’m a skeptic when it comes to ghosts, but I’m much more willing to give this book the benefit of the doubt. For one thing, I just enjoyed reading it as a book.

Due to the nature of the book, I knew going into it that the protagonist would survive–she’s the author, after all. Maybe because of that, I can’t say it ever really scared me. On the other hand, it made me care about the characters. I liked Elaine and her daughters and wanted to know what was going to happen to them. I wanted things to work out and wanted them to be happy. That is one of the key things The Amityville Horror was missing, and I thought it was because the author was writing about real people instead of crafting characters. Well, Grave’s End proved to me that it doesn’t have to be that way.

The ghostly elements were also presented in a much better way. A lot of different supernatural events happen in this book, but they had consistency. Yes, some were unrelated, seemingly random events unconnected to the main plot, but it worked. It let me suspend my disbelief and accept this strange house where creepy things happen.

Best of all, it had resolution. By the end of the book, they know what caused the main hauntings. Prior to that, the characters’ research revealed details that gave meaning to some of the sightings and events. This way, it felt like a ghost story (enough to remind me that I really need to get back to playing Fatal Frame). Pieces of the mystery were gradually revealed, and then the final revelations occurred with the “cleaning” at the end. The big revelation is pretty interesting, too. In a dark, morbid sort of way, I loved it.

Not every question was answered, and some of the answers weren’t satisfactory–but what really delighted me was that Elaine commented on these things. They weren’t just thrown at me in a “that’s just how it is,” way. Instead, I felt her uncertainty and doubts even as I felt my own. That’s great, and I can’t think of a better way to write a true account where things don’t neatly come together in the end.

One thing did bother me, though. (And this relates to the ending, so if you haven’t read Grave’s End and intend to, this is a spoiler!) Near the end, Karin is pretty upset that the medium “cleaned” the house instead of just communicating with the spirits. She felt they should have been asked if they wanted the supernatural activity to stop or not. The only counterargument really brought up was that the events were scary and Elaine assumed getting rid of them was the right thing to do. Why didn’t anyone mention that the ghosts wanted to move on? They clearly weren’t happy, and the medium even said that they “want to go” (Mercado 151).

Other than that minor issue, I liked this one. It’s believable as a true story, and even if it’s false, it’s a good read as a ghost story. Every place where The Amityville Horror failed, Grave’s End succeeded. My faith in nonfiction ghost stories is restored.

Works Cited

Mercado, Elaine. Ghost’s End: A True Ghost Story. Llewellyn Publishing: Woodbury, 2001. Print.

The Amityville Horror: If It Isn’t a True Story…

Books, Reviews, RIG: The Haunted 8 Responses »

Nov 052014

As you might know, I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m willing to give real life ghost stories the benefit of the doubt, though, and since I do believe in the Devil/demons, I can believe The Amityville Horror is a true account.

That poses a problem. I can’t review a documentary-style book in the same way I would a fiction story. I can’t fault the author’s characterization or the consistency of the plot. Now, there is some controversy about whether or not these things really happened. I didn’t do extensive research, but Wikipedia lists several criticisms, including outright claims that it’s a fictional story.

In fact, I learned in my class that the Lutz family even admitted it was a hoax once.

Still, it presents itself as a true story, so as I read it, I tried to view it as if it was one.

My feelings toward this book would be much less positive if I didn’t go into it with that attitude. I never really grew attached to any of the characters or got a good sense of characterization, and I didn’t feel a sense of immediacy about the plot. Rather than experiencing the story (as you do with a good book), I felt like the story was being told to me. That all ties in to the lack of horror I felt while reading it. Although reviews described The Amityville Horror as terrifying, the fear seems to hinge on your belief that these things actually happened. It’s scary to think that such things are real and could happen to anyone–even you. As a story, however, it failed to scare me.

Books can be terrifying, but only if they pull you in. My lack of investment in the characters and plot left me with no dread or tension.

More than anything, the scares irritated me because of how the author handled them–exclamation points. Lots and lots of exclamation points. Now, I like the occasional exclamation point here or there, but it just tied in to my feeling that I was supposed to be scared merely because the events were real. Even if this was an account of true events, I wish the author would have put a little more care into each horrific revelation.

Still, there’s a positive side to everything. This book was the proof I needed that littering my passages with exclamation points really is a bad idea. H. P. Lovecraft can get away with it, as his characters frantically scrawl down their final terrified thoughts while dying, but it doesn’t work for everyone.

I’d love to critique its plot, but again, I’m limited because of its nature. I wanted to know what forces were at work in the house. I wanted to learn the dark details of the secret room and what it was once used for in the past. I wanted to understand why the various supernatural events were all so random, since the events felt more like a collection of spooky encounters rather than a cohesive story. If it’s a true story, though, my objections fly out the window. Why did these things happen? Because that’s how they happened. Why don’t we get more details? Because the other details aren’t known.

Of course, if it’s a hoax… I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say that a believable hoax can’t be wrapped up as neatly as a fictional story, but still, I can’t help but wonder if they just plotted out their hoax badly, or didn’t care enough to pay attention to the details.

With all that said, what’s up with the cliffhanger ending? I like it… from the perspective of a fictional story. From the documentary perspective, were we supposed to believe the Lutzes really were haunted after they left the house, or did the author just think it would be a cool twist?

I feel like my thoughts on The Amityville Horror are scattered and rambling, and that’s because I really didn’t feel anything for this book at all. At least I hated Ghost Story, at least I could pin down my issues with The Others…

I left The Amityville Horror feeling apathetic. It wasn’t very good, it wasn’t very bad, and I could cut it some slack if it was real, but if it’s a hoax, I wish it had been at least a better story.

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