Sometimes as I lie in bed and just before sleep, I like to try and figure out just what is creepy to me. I would then, on occasion, write down these thoughts of mine. After reading them, sure they sounded pretty eerie to me, but how would I be able to make someone else realize just how creepy this could be. Well it would seem Oren Peli, the director and writer of this movie, had these same thoughts and figured it out. Just make it as realistic as possible.

The movie starts out with Micah (Micah Sloat) playing around with this really nice video camera he has just bought. As he is going around the house discussing the fact that he purchased the camera to see if they can catch any of these sounds his girlfriend is being disturbed by, Katie (Katie Featherston) comes home. She is surprised and not too excited about the fact that she has a camera in her face, but goes along with it to humor her man. Micah then explains the reasoning for the camera to her and Katie is even less thrilled at the idea. That night, Micah sets the camera on the tripod facing their bed to watch them as they sleep. We get to watch as time progresses quickly to around 2 in the morning. Then the clock slows down long enough for us to see the door move. Micah wakes up the next morning and is excited with his find. He shares it with Katie and she just mentions how happy she is that they are having a psychic come over later. As excited about the camera as Katie was, Micah is just as thrilled about having a psychic come in and try and solve problems in his house with his girlfriend. The psychic shows up and gets a history of the “haunting”. In doing so, Katie reveals that she has been persistently haunted since she was 8 years old. Moving from house to house and wherever she would go. This causes the psychic to refer them to a demonologist because he only specializes in human haunts and this sounded more to him like a demon was involved. The psychic leaves and then we find out that this history of Katie’s is news to Micah. He is more determined than ever now to get to the bottom of this on his own and take care of Katie. He convinces Katie to hold off on calling the demonologist until he can do more research into what is going on. The movie continues at this same pace as we follow the daily lives of this couple as they try to figure out exactly what is going on and how to handle it.

     The acting was good in this movie. The characters appear to be as normal as they need to be and they really need to be, that goes a long way with this story. I will say that the Micah character did begin to weigh on me a bit, but that was what was supposed to happen so, good job. Featherston did a great job with portraying each level of her fear as things start to progress.

     The effects were another plus. They were more about atmosphere then anything else, but very effective none the less. They also seemed like they’d be so simple to produce, but at the same time the tension these simple things were causing in the audience was pretty incredible. Subtlety rules the day in this one…until the end anyway.

     That brings me to my thoughts on the movie. I have to say it did deliver in the creepiness category and it was impressive to watch. A big helper for me at this viewing was the people around me. Hearing how nervous they were and how completely fearful this movie had made them put a smile on my face. For me, I haven’t really stopped thinking about it and I can’t wait to share it with friends to get their reaction, but I think it really works if you’re into stories of strange goings on and the paranormal. Luckily I am.