Paranormal Activity

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

With its this-is-really-happening vibe, Paranormal Activity scrapes away 30 years of encrusted nightmare clichés. The fear is real, all right, because the fear is really in you.

Film Threat Felix Vasques, Jr.

This is a brutal, exhausting, and genuinely horrifying little ghost flick.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

An ingenious little horror film, so well made it's truly scary.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

The film loses some of its grimy verisimilitude toward the end, but it’s nevertheless a surprisingly effective low-budget shocker with a sensibility as current as the latest viral videos, yet rooted in the suggestive, less-is-more atmospherics of Val Lewton.

Time Richard Corliss

Beyond the viral ingenuity of the marketing, what's cool about PA is that it's not just a fun thrill ride; it's an instructive artistic experience. A horror-movie revisionist, Peli follows a less-is-more strategy.

Variety Dennis Harvey

Paranormal succeeds in staying unnervingly "real."

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

Peli works at mining the unknown, the unknowable, like a minimalist, using small moments and virtually no special effects exceedingly well.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

Grounded by strong performances by newcomers Featherston and Sloat, who pretty much have the movie to themselves, Paranormal Activity, which demands to be seen in a crowded theater, is refreshingly blood-free.

Salon.com Mary Elizabeth Williams

It's a hit for the most surprising reason of all: because it's very good.

Empire Simon Crook

An Amityville for the YouTube age: potent, primal and genuinely frightening.

Philadelphia Inquirer Tirdad Derakhshani

An impressive, not entirely successful exercise in minimalist filmmaking.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

With a $15,000 budget too puny to empty a petty-cash drawer, the no-frills Paranormal Activity comes packed with thrills.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Like legendary producer Val Lewton in the '40s, director Oren Peli, who shot "Paranormal" in seven days in his own home, understands that what's most frightening is what you don't see but merely suggested.

USA Today Claudia Puig

No-frills chills are what Paranormal Activity offers in unrelenting supply.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

Succeeds in its modest goals of building tension slowly and generating a handful of legitimate scares. A few people in the audience were laughing during the first half of the film. No one was laughing during the long walk out of the theater.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

I’ve never seen a movie that so cunningly exploits our anticipation.

Slate Dana Stevens

It comes by its screams honestly, earning them with incremental, at times agonizing gradations of old-fashioned, what's-that-noise-in-the-hallway suspense.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The movie's faults aside, this is the kind of show where half the fun is watching it in the company of a large group of people.

Time Out New York Ben Kenigsberg

Often has the feel of a film-school exercise in which the object is to wring maximum suspense from rudimentary tools.

The Hollywood Reporter Kevin Lally

"Paranormal" ultimately does deliver in a way that "Blair Witch" never did, but its achingly slow buildup is a test not just of an audience's patience but the power of hype surrounding the latest alternative scary movie.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

A "Blair Witch"-y creepshow that owes a lot to Japanese horror.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

A crudely made, half-clever little frightener that has become something of a pop-culture sensation and most certainly the movie marketing story of the year.

Boston Globe Justine Elias

Even at 85 minutes, the movie contains maybe 50 minutes that scare.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Don't believe the hype: Paranormal Activity may be a lot of things, but the words "scary" and "movie" are not among them. It is instead nothing more or less than an excruciatingly tedious YouTube gag cleverly marketed to go viral in the broadest and most box office-friendly way.