I went to see Paranormal at the cinema last night and I have to say it was the most refreshing piece of Horror film making I have ever seen. It's subtlety in it's build up through it's introduction of the characters as an everyday young couple, through to the haunting's gradually escalating to the big finale was perfect in my opinion. I have read and heard people say that the first half was boring, but I think that shows what the current state of movies and society as a whole is like. If a movie isn't all action from the first two minutes until the end, it's seen as boring. Have our attention spans really become this poor that we can't even focus on 30 minutes of build up anymore?

Without that 30 minutes at the start, we wouldn't have invested anything into the characters of Katie and Micah and therefore wouldn't have felt like we knew them as a couple once they really started to get spooked. Without that 30 minutes, we wouldn't of known that Micah is more interested in capturing footage than the welfare of Katie and this would of rendered the film phoney and unwatchable.

I've even heard someone say that they wish the whole film had been like the last five minutes and to be honest, other than someone saying they walked after 20 minutes this is the most stupid opinion I've heard yet. If Katie had been chucking Micah about and becoming uber-demon within minutes of the film starting then the ending would of literally been yawn inducing, as it is the end really hits you because of whole the rest of the film focused more on being creepy than making the audience jump.

How anyone didn't even find this film even creepy let alone scary is beyond me. You hear film-makers saying all the time about they wanted the film to be a situation that anyone could find themselves in. But in reality how many people are scared about being attacked by a masked serial killer when they leave the house or being eaten by a cannibal family whenever they go on a road-trip. I know I'm certainly not, but I can guarantee you that if I was asleep in my bed and my door suddenly slammed shut or I heard a huge crash, I would quite literally launch myself six-foot in the air I would jump that much.

I have to say I would be interested in watching the other endings, I think on a small screen, the theatrical ending wouldn't be quite so effective so it'll be interesting to see if they give you the option of the other two endings on its DVD release.

As for a sequel, I can't say I'm looking forward to this. If any film could do without a sequel, it's this! Part of it's scaryness is how the actors were so off of the radar that they could of really been real people. Put anyone recogniseable in the sequel and the whole thing is ruined... so in my opinion that even rules out a return of Katie's character. I think the only interesting avenue they could take with this 'franchise' is to perhaps do a prequel involving Diane (the girl from the website) and base a film around her, however the problem there is that the Diane story was supposedly from the 1960's virtually making a realistic hand held movie believable impossible, with the limitations of period technology etc.

All in all, I would say that Paranormal Activity lives up to it's billing as 'the most terrifying of all time...' simply because in an era where anything is possible on film, where we see everything from peoples heads being chopped off to god knows what else, things as simple as shadows, swinging doors and bellowing sheets have managed to effect so many people. This is my mind makes it a modern day classic and a film that will be remembered and still seen as notoriously scary in 20-30 years time. That is if they don't completely rape the formula with endless sequels and spin-offs... we'll see.