Paranormal Activity OR Why Demons/Ghosts/Supernatural Thingymabobs Never Possess Fat Women

Recently HIM went on a business trip.  As he does.  Then after Cressy went to bed, I made the mistake of watching...da...dah...dah...a SCARY MOVIE.  By myself.  I should have called my sister.  And well, it wasn't really a mistake because most scary movies really don't bother me.  I can watch Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street and stuff like that and yawn thoroughly before going to bed.  Yeah, if I dream, it will probably be about Bubba and Precious having a hoedown or something like that.

But instead I watched Paranormal Activity. This is a movie I have not seen before and for those of you who haven't seen it, I may spoil it.  Oh, no may be about it, I will spoil it.  I'm going to pour a big flaming pile of spoilers all over it.  I'm going to make this blog drown in spoilers.  You get the picture.

Spoilers HO!

Hereafter, there be spoilers, not ho's.

So stop reading here if you have an urgent need to rush out and rent Paranormal Activity.  (The first one since it's got two sequels at the moment and probably two more in the can, a line of books, a video game, and dolls that will levitate and leave spooky three-toed prints on your floor.)  And hold the Android, I'm going to use bold, italic red lettering every time I use the title, Paranormal Activity.  See.  Paranormal Activity.  Paranormal Activity.  Paranormal Activity.  (Now it just seems weird.  Have you ever repeated a word so many times it doesn't sound like a real word anymore?  Well, if you haven't before, you probably will after this.)

One more.  PARA-frickin'-NORMAL ACTIVITY!!!!!  It's not normal.  It's para.  And it's activity.  What kind of activity?  Well, it's activity that you get to watch in someone's house.  The viewer gets to be like a voyeur.  Kinky.  Except it's not kinky.

For those of you who have seen it, well, you know what I'm talking about.  We have two people hanging out in their house.  The guy, Micah, buys a camera, because he and his girlfriend, Katie, have been hearing things go bump in the middle of the night.  And they can't explain the noises.  Katie lays down a bomb.  "Dude," she says to Micah (or in my version), "I've had this thing following me around for years, since I was a kid.  And wham, here it is again.  Just chillax and it'll go away."  Micah's all like, "Woman, you might have mentioned the ghost/demon/paranormal attachment a few dates before I asked you to move in."  Of course, being haunted by possible demonic/ghostly entities was always first on my list to share with potential boyfriend material.

Okay, so they got past all of that.  Now they live together and some spooky shizz has been happening.  Sounds and shizz.  Noises and shizz.  And get this.  More shizz, because I suddenly like using the word shizz.  See, shizz.  One night, Micah is conveniently filming.  (Oh, blessed serendipity.)  Katie finds her car keys...in the middle of the floor.  Like OMG, if I came in and found my car keys in the middle of the floor, I would be so freaked out, I would leave the house and move into a nunnery.

Oh yeah, I'm not Catholic and I wouldn't do that.  What would I do?  I'd say, "Someone stop giving the cat catnip because he's been on the counters again."  I'd pick the keys up and put them on the key rack on the wall.  I would not automatically assume a paranormal entity has been effing with my lifestyle.  (Maybe the thing just wanted to keep me from driving drunk or something.  It could be a well-meaning paranormal thingymabob.  Who are we to judge?)  I mean, so what if the keys were in the middle of the floor?  It's not like they were levitating in the middle of the room with a neon sign pointing to them.  And oh, my, I'm forced to do an illustration.

So, here's the gist of it.  Katie's theory of progressive demonic activity is because Micah got a camera the paranormal dude is pissed the eff off.  So Micah, obviously not impressed that he's pissed IT off, sets the camera up in the bedroom, with a view of them in the bed and the hallway, which is always ominously dark, and the door is always open.  (Here's what I would say to Micah and Katie, "Dudes, if something is tromping up my stairs in the middle of the night and banging pots and pans, I would suggest shutting the bedroom door and locking it, and also earplugs.")

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY!  PARANORMAL ACTIVITY!  PARANORMAL ACTIVITY!  I bet you thought I forgot about making it bold, italicized and in red, huh?  I didn't.

But noooooo.  Micah and Katie want to have more paranormal excitement.  (Also the psychic warned them that if they left right then, the movie would be WAY too short.  No, he didn't say that.  What he really said was the invisible doowhacky would follow them.  Because it wants...Katie!)  Wow.  So soonest whilst they're sleeping, and may I say for a young couple they're not getting a lot of action, the viewer is clued in by hearing the giveaway whump-whump-whumps.  Well, Micah and Katie don't hear it because they're still asleep.  And then the door slams by itself.  On film.  Micah and Katie wake up and are like, "OMG, what was that?"  Then they go back to sleep because door-slamming paranormal entities are obviously just a little cranky-pants and don't need to be worried about.  But the next day, Micah's all like, "Look, what was on the video."  I'd be like, "Can you say YouTube, Dude?"

And the paranormal fun isn't over.  Micah spreads powder on the floor to catch the invisible freak in the act.  Surprise!  They do!  There are funky footprints in the powder leading down the hallway to their attic access door, which is ajar.  (That reminds me of a joke I used in a book, which I'm going to repeat because I'm easily amused.  When is a door not a door?  When it's ajar.  Get it?)  Of course, Micah goes up there because we can't miss a moment of supreme paranormal suspense.  We might have a cheap thrill.  This might be a pucker factor of one to ten.  (Ten being the end where you have to have your tidy whity's surgically removed.)

So to sum.  Some strange shizz is happening in the San Diego area because something invisible and possible demonic followed Katie around.  It's ticked because Micah is having a Kodachrome moment and maybe it doesn't like getting its hooves in the baby powder.  And finally, it left a photograph of Katie in the attic.  (A photograph that can't really exist because Katie's house was burned down by the whatsit as a child and all the photographs went with it.  She remembers this specific photograph, you know.  I can't remember what happened when I was eight except the story about hiding the Brussels Sprouts, but Katie does.  Apparently she didn't hide Brussels Sprouts because she had a demonic presence instead.  Maybe the demonic presence ate the Brussels Sprouts and that's why it's demonic.)  (I'm not saying it's all right to be demonic and possess folks, but if you ate Brussels Sprouts maybe you would have a very good reason.) The psychic they brought to the house sez, "It wants Katie and you should talk to my demonologist friend.  Gotta go because I've got the skeevies bad."

As we're bouncing toward the inevitable conclusion, chills run down the spine.  (I'll tell you what the inevitable conclusion is because it's inevitable.  So here it is, our inevitable conclusion is that SOMETHING BAD IS GONNA HAPPEN SOON because the movie's only got ten minutes left and rainbows are NOT shooting out of Micah and Katie's asses.)

So in the next bedroom clip, something tromps up the stairs again, grabs Katie's ankle and drags her down the hallway while she's screaming.  Micah, who's sleeping in the spot farthest from the door, (I'll tell you who would be sleeping next to the demonic portal and it wouldn't be me in my household.  I'm throwing HIM to them devil doggies.) has a delayed reaction.  I guess he was having a happy dream and finally goes after her.  But it's too late because the invisible dothingy has bitten her!  And left marks that Micah must film because that's the kind of guy he is.  (Did I mention he follows her into the bathroom with the camera, too?)

Again, can anyone say, "YouTube, Mutha!"  I would charge, too.  Advertising.  Maybe start selling t-shirts, and special baby powder.

Well, I won't give away the ending completely, except that SOMETHING BAD DID INDEED HAPPEN.  Well, duh.  It was that kind of movie.

Anyway, I can be all sarcastic about it now because it's funny...now.

PARANORMAL SHIZZING ACTIVITY!  I had to throw that in one more time because it's funny.  Or at least it is to me.

Later that night, as I was trying to go to sleep, it wasn't funny.  And dammit, I didn't have any baby powder.  But it dawned on me why I didn't need to be afraid.