Three ways Paranormal Activity is better than that movie about those kids lost in the woods in Maryland

[Ed. - This post contains spoilers for Paranormal Activity. You've been warned.]

Yes, the recently released Paranormal Activity has a lot in common with The Blair Witch Project, including a found-footage construct, improvised acting, a supernatural villain, and a unique marketing strategy. But in three crucial ways, Paranormal Activity is a far better film.

1. It's not boring: Blair Witch relied so heavily on its construct that it forgot to include any real scares. After 50 minutes of kids walking in circles in the woods, the creeping sense of impending doom was gone. Paranormal Activity, on the other hand, keeps squeezing the noose a bit tighter with every scene.

2. The end isn't a let down: One of my main gripes with Blair Witch is that its climax is even more boring than the rest of the movie. The audience deserves at least one good shot of the witch. Instead, we get someone standing in the corner and a whole lot of dirt floor. Yawn. Paranormal Activity gives us a real climax, and a brief but perfect shot of a shadowy demon made flesh and blood.

It's an example of the hardest type of horror movie to film: In "Final Destination and the importance of insight," I wrote that there are only two horror movies. The most common is called Bad Things Happen Off the Beaten Path. The second is called Sometimes Bad Things Just Happen. For all its innovation, Blair Witch is merely a re-scripting of the former. Kids stray away from society's norms and get punished for it. Paranormal Activity is a different sort of film. Like Halloween or Jaws, it gives us a metaphor for the random, meaningless, real-life evils that are suffered by innocent people in their own homes when they least expect it. This type of horror film is nearly impossible to make. But when it's done well, it always costs you a bit of your sanity.

The bottom line is, I'm never going witch-hunting in Maryland. People who do probably get what they deserve. But I am going to lock my doors, turn out my lights and climb into my bed at night. And if even this conventional, careful life can't keep me safe, what can?

Will YouTube ruin moviemaking?

Do I get thrown out of the horror geek guild if I admit that I found Blair Witch boring? Jerks get lost, someone's standing in a corner, the end. At what point was I supposed to be scared?

And where was the witch?

Blair Witch tried to pull the same stunt Jaws did. Disorientation plus apprehension equals jitters. But at the end of Jaws, I was rewarded when I saw saw the object of my terror made flesh and bone. Blair Witch wussed out.

"You're supposed to use your imagination," my friends explained. But by that logic, why make a movie at all? Why not just tell people there's something lurking under their beds and leave it at that?

If you go to the trouble to make a monster movie, you owe your audience at least one good, long look at the monster. Bless you, M. Night Shyamalan.

At least Blair Witch was trying to be original. Two new movies - Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead - sound as if they were modeled after UGC. They're monster movies, as they'd be posted to YouTube. Their style is the exact opposite of stalker vision. Instead of seeing what the killer sees, you see what the victim sees.

In theory this intimacy should be scary, but in reality it's almost always annoying. Because in real life, you'd never get to see the monster. It either eats you when you least expect it, or while you're running the opposite direction.

Cloverfield has received positive reviews and Diary of the Dead is the work of a film legend. They may turn out to be individually brilliant. But in general Hollywood shouldn't try to emulate the style of amateur Internet content creators. Hollywood's advantage is that it has the financial resources and SFX knowhow to actually show us the monster. It ought to exploit that edge.

Image from the The Village and Fair Use rationale found on wikipedia.