Why Paranormal Activity Kickstarted The Found Footage Craze

Why Paranormal Activity Kickstarted The Found Footage Craze

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Paranormal Activity kicked off a trend of found footage horror movies when it hit theaters, and there are a few factors to how it pulled that off.

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Why Paranormal Activity Kickstarted The Found Footage Craze

2009’s Paranormal Activity kicked off an explosion of found footage horror movies that lasted for several years, and a collection of factors all working in its favor help explain how it did so. It wasn’t that long ago that the Paranormal Activity franchise reigned supreme in theaters every Halloween. Like any film franchise to rise to such popularity, Paranormal Activity’s return from the grave comes just in time for Halloween 2021 with the seventh installment, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, landing on Paramount+

Paranormal Activity wasn’t patient zero of the found footage subgenre, with Cloverfield, REC, and its American remake Quarantine preceding it, and The Blair Witch Project becoming a genuine bonanza in the summer of 1999. However, Paranormal Activity directly led to found footage becoming the biggest horror movie trend for years, with The Last Exorcism, Apollo 18, The Devil Inside, and the also popular V/H/S series, just to name a few, arriving in its wake. Found footage existed before Paranormal Activity, but director Oren Peli’s surprise hit was what really made it popular.

As with any story of box office success and subsequent legacy on the level of what Paranormal Activity managed to achieve, multiple different elements were obviously at play. For the more complex story of how Paranormal Activity became the found footage trendsetter that it did, it simply came down to all of the chips falling in its favor in just the right ways and at just the right time. Here’s how Paranormal Activity launched the found footage craze of the 2010s.

Paranormal Activity Came Out Of Nowhere (& Overtook Saw)

Why Paranormal Activity Kickstarted The Found Footage Craze

There are sleeper hits, and then there’s the Halloween coup that Paranormal Activity pulled off. The test screening success of Paranormal Activity made studio executives so confident, they abandoned the initial plan of a higher budgeted remake, only changing the ending and marketing Paranormal Activity aggressively with a “Demand It” gimmick. The marketing of Paranormal Activity made the found footage film a genuine Halloween event. All of that built up such audience curiosity that Paranormal Activity’s box office success was a done deal, but it also pulled off one more impressive feat.

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Up until that point, the Saw franchise ruled over the Halloween weekend every year, and against all odds, Paranormal Activity stole the thunder from that year’s Saw VI to become the Halloween movie everyone had to see in 2009. Paranormal Activity’s success story was the kind that becomes the stuff of legend. For the found footage sub-genre writ large, as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats.

Paranormal Activity’s Budget And Filming Techniques Were Easy To Replicate

Why Paranormal Activity Kickstarted The Found Footage Craze

Even by found footage standards, Paranormal Activity was dirt cheap. The film was shot for $15,000 and came in at a final total of $215,000 with its reshot editing and post-production work. Even more so than the creatively marketed Blair Witch Project before it, the film showed that found footage was not only a goldmine if the movie in question is scary enough, it could also be cranked out with practically no investment at all. It also showed that a private residence and a camera that remained stationary for the majority of the story could dramatically simplify the entire process of making the film.

Granted, the Slender Man-centered YouTube series Marble Hornets was the only found footage enterprise to ever really run a Paranormal Activity-level shoe-string budget, and many like The Last Exorcism still had more of a Blair Witch-style shaky-cam approach. Still, Paranormal Activity had shown that just how low the floor of the found footage expenditure could be and still turn in blockbuster numbers, also setting the example for others like the V/H/S movies to avoid found footage complaints. Moreover, while Paranormal Activity was the progenitor of the found footage renaissance, its follow-up a year later was just as crucial in sealing the deal.

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Paranormal Activity 2 Was A Successful Follow-up To Its Predecessor

The factor that perhaps made The Blair Witch Project more of a one-and-done success story compared to Paranormal Activity was the performance of its sequel in 2000, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. The movie received a lukewarm response and significantly underperformed its predecessor, though it’s accumulated a cult following in the years since. Even without its muted theatrical performance though, Blair Witch 2 ditched the found footage style of its predecessor, so it didn’t provide a follow-up that could furnish more data on the factors that went into its performance. The Blair Witch Project’s unrepeatably specific success could also be attributed arguably as much to the marketing essentially pulling off a big hoax as the crude minimalism the film itself. Paranormal Activity 2 grappled with none of these challenges.

Arriving in theaters in October of 2010, Paranormal Activity 2 rode the wave of the original with a new story and characters. Paranormal Activity 2 even pulled off quite a surprise by landing as a prequel rather than a sequel, and ended up being a sizeable and generally well-liked hit. The Paranormal Activity franchise was off to races from that point on. More importantly, what Paranormal Activity first demonstrated about the potency and profitability of found footage was solidified by Paranormal Activity 2. Thus, the found footage golden age truly began.

Paranormal Activity’s success came through the right conditions all working in tandem to make it a hit, while its larger legacy of what it did for the evolution of found footage was an even more perfect storm of everything going just right in just the right ways. With the right combo of marketing, micro-budget filming techniques, and a follow-up that proved it was no fluke, Paranormal Activity became the Halloween hit of the season in 2009. To effectively make home movies produced for pennies the big horror movie craze for over half a decade may still be the most astonishing footnote of Paranormal Activity’s legacy.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/paranormal-activity-found-footage-blair-witch-kickstarted/

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