With the sudden re-emergence of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY on the radar (after two years of subtle hype, the flick is finally set to be released later this month), it’s almost quaint to remember that it was bought by Paramount Pictures and Dreamworks in early 2008 – when no one had even heard of it – with an eye toward remaking the low-budget story of a demonic haunting. Now that it’s been revealed that Paramount is giving it a limited bow on SEPTEMBER 25th (Dreamworks and Paramount had a break up; Paramount came away with PARANORMAL), we have to wonder: where’s the proposed remake?
Good news: Looks like it ain’t happening. Producer Steven Schneider says as much to Variety in an article profiling the fledgling producer: “DreamWorks, under Paramount, bought it with the intention of remaking it with the original director… We had test screenings built into the deal, so we could discern what needed to be redone in the remake. But the movie tested so well, they decided that it would be the height of folly to remake a mock-doc-type film with unknown actors.”
Having seen the film, I couldn’t agree more. The reason the movie works is its intimate, home-video approach – if you remade it as a big-budget horror film, you might as well just call it POLTERGEIST IV.
That said, there’s still some caution advised when approaching PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. The flick is being dubbed the next BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and I suppose it IS – for both reasons good and bad. Yes, it’s a spooky drama made on the cheap, using a pseudo-documentary approach, and provoking chills while showing little. On the flip-side… well, it shows very little (remember how the general public felt about that with BLAIR WITCH?), and the plentiful non-horror sections of PARANORMAL could be considered “boring” by less patient viewers… I can’t help but worry that PARANORMAL might suffer the same backlash BLAIR WITCH went through after its release. (Albeit, not to the same degree, since this flick doesn’t have nearly the amount of hype.)
Just giving y’all a heads-up; go in with realistic expectations…
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