What We (Should've) Learned from Paranormal Activity

Speaking for myself, the movies with the biggest impact as far as emotional resonance, creative inspiration and artistic merit, generally fall under the category of Independent Film – “small” movies – though that classification may be considered relative, to say the least (a $30 million budget deems a film eligible for the Independent Spirit Awards – certain handfuls of people might consider thirty million dollars to be a more-than-modest sum). Given their inherent budgetary limitations, which tend to signify less financial pressure and therefore less creative interference, it makes sense that these character-driven “underdog” movies that empathically reflect truths about our inner lives and capture reality on a more grounded and visceral level, would evoke the strongest emotional impact on an audience seeking that form of storytelling.

Much harder to do, however, is to make a “small” low-budget movie that has a big impact on the commercial front, delivering a cinematic experience that rivals absurdly expensive blockbusters, penetrating the culture itself, and reaching such a vast audience that the landscape of an entire genre undergoes a cosmic shift. Even harder still, would be to achieve such a feat with a micro-budget of only $15,000. Very few movies have done this. Actually, only one movie has done it: Paranormal Activity (2007).

Okay, yes, calm down – The Blair Witch Project (1999) did it first. But that movie's production budget was $60,000 and Paranormal Activity unseated it as the most profitable movie of all time, so that's what I'm writing about. It's also admittedly the one I saw first and was much more personally affected by at the ripe age of 10. My friend James and I watched it in my basement late at night, and when it was over we both sprinted upstairs and hugged my dad. That never happened before or since. (That specific scenario – I hug my dad all the time. Love you, Dad.)

In addition to boasting quadruple the budget, Blair Witch took place in the woods – a highly accessible location for indie filmmaking that could inspire amateur directors to follow suit – but Paranormal Activity took it one step further: it's literally a home movie. It was filmed entirely on a Sony camcorder inside the private home of Oren Peli, who served as the film's writer, director, producer, cinematographer and editor (IMDb also lists him as the uncredited set decorator, costume designer and casting director). With a tiny cast and crew, Peli shot the movie for almost nothing over the course of just one week. There are “small” movies, and there are small movies. This… this was tiny.

And yet, it became enormous. Long story short, the right eyes saw it and threw a bunch more money at it in post, changed the ending, gave it a worldwide release and made a couple hundred million bucks. Despite the aid of those little interventions, though, the film very much maintained its self-made quality. Unlike most mainstream horror movies, which rely on their larger budgets to create the discomfort of terrifying imagery and sound designed for big screen consumption, the smallness of Paranormal Activity was its key ingredient for eliciting true terror. Its cheap, homemade, low-fi aesthetic was integral to its effect as a “found footage” movie. Married with naturally improvisational performances and a patiently paced story structure full of rising stakes, the sense of intimacy achieved by the minuscule production effectively made viewers feel like a demonic presence had entered their own homes. It blew audiences minds, and they couldn't get enough of it.

Until they very much got enough of it.

As it always happens in studio filmmaking, what do the top dogs in Hollywood think is the best way to capitalize on an original motion picture's success? Do it again! But bigger! And again! But BIGGER! Inevitably, Paranormal Activity became a whole franchise, and the found footage genre exploded – but they all have the same thing in common. They all learned the wrong lesson, by going big. Paranormal Activity 2 cost $3 million – a very small budget compared to the average mainstream release, but still 200 times larger than the original film. The third and fourth film cost $5 million. The fifth and sixth cost $10 million. The quality diminished with each one (okay, the third one actually wasn't so bad). It's also worth noting that none of these sequels were written or directed by Oren Peli. Now, the found footage horror movie is far less popular, and in many circles considered to be a subgenre that is not only monetarily low, but artistically low. But what if we had taken the right lesson away to begin with?

No movie has scared the hell out of me like the first Paranormal Activity. I had trouble walking around my own house with the lights off for weeks afterwards – not because I was afraid something would actually jump out at me, but rather that my mind would conjure something to jump out at me. I was scared of my own imagination.

But I was also liberated by it. If this guy could make a micro-budget movie that causes people like me to feel something that intensely, and get filthy rich off of it, then maybe I could too! (Spoiler alert: nope.) Essentially, the movie really boosted my motivation to use anything I had at my disposal in service of no-budget short films. I was inspired to embrace my constraints. I even made my own teenaged 16-minute Paranormal Activity spoof, and while I hope that I've developed a more original voice and improved on my filmmaking ability since then, I've carried that exact same “embrace your constraints” philosophy with me through the years and try to spread it wherever I can. Last year, I directed my first submission to the Run N Gun 48-hour film festival, which encourages on-the-fly filmmaking without barriers, fuelled by the spirit of truly independent filmmaking. Fittingly, my film was… another found footage horror spoof. Clearly, the influence has remained.

The sentiment has never been truer that anybody can make a movie. The concept of turning “write what you know” into “shoot what you know you can shoot” is by no means a novel idea, and yet it does seem to be a lesson of which people need to be reminded – I remind myself all the time. In the case of independent film, thinking inside the box can be the thing that blows the roof off. Even if your movie doesn't reach millions of people and turn you into a millionaire, the notion holds true that your authentically “small” story could be greatly impactful in more fulfilling ways. It's so easy to look at Paranormal Activity and be blinded by the financial and cultural behemoth it became, just as it might be easy to look at last year's Anora's massive Oscar success and forget how it all began: one person had a vision, and gathered a minimal crew of people to help bring it to life. Whether on a “small” budget of $6 million such as the latter case, or a mere teeny-tiny $15 thousand such as the former, the potential impact can be bigger than you'd ever imagined.