“Ghost in the Hollywood machine: ‘Paranormal Activity’ beat the odds (and gave Spielberg the willies)”

Could this be another The Blair Witch Project (1999)? The ‘this’ being Paranormal Activity:

Steven Spielberg was certain his copy of “Paranormal Activity” was haunted.

It was early 2008, and the director’s DreamWorks studio was trying to decide whether it wanted to be a part of the micro-budgeted supernatural thriller. As the story goes, Spielberg had taken a “Paranormal Activity” DVD to his Pacific Palisades estate, and not long after he watched it, the door to his empty bedroom inexplicably locked from the inside, forcing him to summon a locksmith.

While Spielberg didn’t want the “Paranormal Activity” disc anywhere near his home — he brought the movie back to DreamWorks in a garbage bag, colleagues say — he very much shared his studio’s enthusiasm for director Oren Peli’s haunting story about the demonic invasion of a couple’s suburban tract house.

“Paranormal Activity” was hardly a typical studio production. Peli, an Israeli-born video game designer who had no formal film training, shot the $15,000 movie in a week in 2006 with a no-name cast, a crew of several San Diego friends and a hand-held video camera.

But as Spielberg and the DreamWorks team believed, the movie held a special appeal — it was original and scary.

For more info, I visited the movie’s site on RottenTomatoes.com. Here’s a plot synopsis:
 A haunted house makes no secret of the fact it is not pleased with its new tenants in this independent tale of supernatural horror. Katie (Katie Featherson) and Micah (Micah Sloat) are a…

A haunted house makes no secret of the fact it is not pleased with its new tenants in this independent tale of supernatural horror. Katie (Katie Featherson) and Micah (Micah Sloat) are a twentysomething couple who’ve just moved into a new home in San Diego, California. Katie has an interest in the paranormal and believes that malevolent spirits have been following her since childhood, though Micah is not so easily convinced. However, after several nights of loud noises and strange happenings, Micah starts to agree with Katie that some sort of ghost may have followed them to the new home. After a paranormal researcher tells the couple he can’t help them, Micah decides to take control of the situation and sets up a battery of video cameras so that if a spirit manifests itself, he can capture its behavior on tape. Once the surveillance cameras are in place, Katie and Micah bring in a Ouija board in an effort to talk to the spirits, a move that deeply offends the ghosts.

Here’s the official movie trailer:

For what it’s worth, the current RottenTomatoes.com rating of the movie is 100% (based on 7 reviewers).

Maybe it did scare Spielberg. Or maybe that’s just part of the hype. But who can forget the amazing buzz and hysteria” surrounding The Blair Witch Project?

Do you remember when you saw Blair Witch? What do you think Paranormal Activity will do?
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