It begins. The only time of the year that Sydney is a city actually worth living in.
It started with a night of double third wheelin': I saw Food, Inc. with friends Fran and Kent, and then jumped ship to Oliver and Amy for Paranormal Activity. It's okay; I got my hand held during the scary bits.
Food, Inc.
This documentary by Robert Kenner should be the next entry at Stuff White People Like. It also happens to be indispensible.
Food, Inc. is similar in substance to 2003's The Corporation, only rather than tackling capitalism as a whole, it focuses on the food industry. There's no one narrator; rather interviews serve as voice-over: most prominently Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan, who wrote The Omnivore Dilemma. Beyond them, we meet farmers, workers and activists.
Prepare to be guilted. If you've ever set foot in a supermarket or a fast food restaurant, this movie will make you feel bad for doing so. We meat-eaters know where our food comes from; I doubt few people would be unaware that animal care practices these days aren't of the highest standards. Here, it's really highlighted. Not just animal treatment, but how they're fed and kept for the sake of growing animals bigger, faster and cheaper.
Food, Inc. points the finger – and may not be surprised to hear this – at corporations, as well as the government for subsidizing their practices and for the ineffectuality of the FDA. It's all eye-opening, but it wouldn't be a strong film if it left its audience up this creek without a paddle. Fortunately the film offers solutions – what individuals can do to try to make a change. Message-heavy documentaries such as Food, Inc. need this element. If they were simple to list a series of problems, they would almost be rendered pointless.
There's a lot of insight here. We meet a farmer who continues to use organic practices and refuses to go commercial and expand, as well as a former activist whose organic food company is sold at supermarkets all over the US – he has no illusions that the corporations he sells to buy his products for business rather than ethical reasons, but sees capitalism as a tool that he can use for change. We also see how intellectual property laws, of all things, are used against farmers growing crops.
The film is one-sided, of course – we see few arguments defending the food industry – and is certainly preaching to the choir. But if this little, well made, fascinating, troubling and eye-opening documentary – apologies to Stephanie Meyer for the number of adjectives I just used – can make it big, maybe change can be a possibility. If you watch this movie, you'll know why we need it.
9/10
Paranormal Activity
Katie (Katie Featherson) and Micah (Micah Sloat) are a happy, ordinary couple who have just moved in together, who have discovered that the entity that has been haunting Katie on and off since she was eight years old has taken up residence as well. The film is entirely through the lens of the camera that Micah has bought to document what's going on. What some may call a Blair Witch Project rip-off manages to be one of the scariest movies in years. Scary: not grotesque, not shocking, but something to bring back that fear of the dark you thought you lost years ago.
The film is set over a period of three weeks, starting without a studio logo – just a thank you to the families of Lisa and Micah, and the San Diego police for the footage – and ending with director Oren Peli getting the only credit, as the editor. It's not real, of course, but the authenticity – naturalistic dialogue, unknown performers – helps Paranormal Activity to no end. The characters aren't larger than life, but are interesting; Katie has known this phenomenon all her life and is getting increasingly upset by it, while Micah starts the film fascinated by it but as it goes on he positions himself, narcissistically, as the hero.
The structure of the film is the reason it works so well. Micah is constantly filming, often against the behest of Katie. Every night the camera is put on a tripod facing the couple's bed and the doorway into their room. During this set up, we get a subtitle ("Night 1", "Night 3") and a timecode. It's here that the creepiness really sets in. On each of these night set ups, things get progressively scarier – what starts as some sounds and the movement of a door early on gives way to things far worse – and soon the audience is audibly filled with dread the moment these sequences begin, to the point where, by Night 21 (hell, even Night 13) it's almost too much to take.
The scares are lo-fi – no CG demons mugging for the camera – and therein lies their believability, and the terror of the film. Paranormal Activity is the best American horror film in recent memory, and one of the scariest movies of the decade. Good luck getting to sleep after this one.
9/10
This horror subgenre – the found footage movies that can be traced back to Cannibal Holocaust but more recently, of course, to The Blair Witch Project, to the point of accusations of ripping it off – should, by all rights, be dead by now. Yet, against all odds, a number of them continue to impress. Rec was fantastic, Cloverfield was a lot of fun, My Little Eye and The Last Horror Movies weren't great, but interesting. The only out-and-out misfire I can remeber is, tellingly, by an experienced filmmaker. George Romero's Diary of the Dead failed, largely, because he refused to let go of theatrical dialogue and acting styles. And music, for Christ's sake – the music nearly undermined the whole experience on its own. Cloverfield wasn't exactly Curb Your Enthusiasm in how naturalistically it was played, but it still had just enough of an air of realism to make it work.
Sadly it seems that Paranormal Activity is being held to ransom by Dreamworks, who bought the rights to the film years ago. There was talk of a remake, by Peli himself, but now the status of that is unclear. If they're not going to do that, they have a perfectly terrifying film that they should release to an unsuspecting public as soon as possible.
