Monday, February 25, 2013

Paranormal Entity


Genre - Horror/Mystery/Thriller
Year Released - 2009
Running Time - 88 minutes
Directed by Shane Van Dyke
Written by Shane Van Dyke
Cast Includes: Erin Marie Hogan, Shane Van Dyke, Fia Perera, and Norman Saleet

Rating: 3 Skulls

Plot Summary:
Not to be confused with 'Paranormal Activity', this take-off documents a family's descent into madness as they are besieged by a demonic force.

Trailer:


Review:
This review comes to you, in thanks to a regular blog commenter, who commented on my prior review 'Hold Your Breath' (which coincidentally also stars this film's lead actress Erin Marie Hogan)

Yet another 'Asylum' "mock-buster" film, Paranormal Entity is obviously a blatant rip-off of 'Paranormal Activity' (which, for the record, bored me to tears!)
However, (as pointed out to me by Jimmie, the commenter) Paranormal Entity's budget actually exceeded that of Paranormal Activity's - shocking, I know - not sure why/how exactly, perhaps the (obvious) model-home used in the film cost a bundle, or perhaps the camera equipment was more expensive... for whatever reason, you would not actually know that you are watching an Asylum film.

Showing alleged "actual footage", Paranormal Entity details the supernatural events leading up to the 2008 murder of Samantha Finley, for whom her brother Thomas was arrested. . .

Dare I say that this film was actually good?
Understand, I hated Paranormal Activity!
I feel that this film pulled off what the other failed to do - a (slightly) better story with more interesting characters.

Is this film truly worthy of 3 skulls? Perhaps not, but if you are in the mood to watch a (at-times) boring paranormal flick, I would choose Paranormal Entity over Activity!

By the way, it is currently available to watch on Netflix Instant

Jason

4 comments:

jimmie t. murakami said...

Good reveiw Jason, like you said it wasn`t quite worthy of a 3-skull rating, i`d have given it 2-and-a-quarter skulls or maybe 2-and-a-half.

thebonebreaker said...

Thanks for the recommendation Jimmie!
I'm simply sticking with the "whole-number" rating system - adding quarters & halves gets to be a bit much...

J

steve prefontaine said...

The picture on the DVD cover of "Paranormal Entity" reminds me of the picture on the poster for "Altered States" (1980).

thebonebreaker said...

Steve,

I can see that, definitely...

J