‘Paranormal Activity’: How Spielberg Made it Happen
The raved about new horror film Paranormal Activity would probably never have made it into the main stream had Steven Spielberg not experience a little haunting of his own after watching the film.
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.
I love that he returned the movie in a garbage bag, as if touching it would bring demons to bother him. It’s a pretty freaky little film, if you haven’t seen it yet and want to be too scared to go to sleep, go check it out. Few films achieve this level of spooky-ness these days.
Source: Los Angeles Times
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I side with Spielberg on this one. I’m usually pretty good at horror films, but this one terrified me like nothing ever had before. I saw the movie the first week that it came out, and since then I have been mysteriously waking up atleast three times a week at 3 a.m. I’ve also woken up twice now to something that sounds insanely close to the voice of my mother, speaking in a frantic, shaking, panic-attacked voice. First at my old house coming from my ceiling, and now in my new apartment outside my bedroom window. Upon running upstairs the first time, and running outside in my pajamas at 6 in the morning the second, I come to find that my mother was in her bed the entire time, asleep.
This movie is not just another horror film, I’m certain of that. You might think I’m crazy, but I know what’s happening isn’t just in my head.