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Blair Witch was not exactly original. At the very least there were exploitation films from the seventies it borrowed its premise from. So I'm not holding it up as some paragon of arty horror films or something. That said, it did feel like it was about something. A casually arrogant group of young people coming to a rural place much older than they are, and underestimating it. And the idea of if it's possible to get truly and desperately lost in modern day America.
Paranormal Activity wasn't really about anything. There was no subtext. For example, the demon could have been a metaphor for a woman whose childhood abuse haunts her, and how it always ends up having a negative impact on her adult relationships. But the film didn't go there. Basically all you had was the arrogant boyfriend who didn't treat things with enough gravity... but isn't that in every horror movie?
As for the the terror aspect... I felt like it dropped the ball a bit. First and foremost the actress wasn't really up to the task of conveying the horror she was living with. A better actress would have been able to build a sense of dread with the performance. In her case, for most of the running time, it was either "I'm scared" or "I've completely forgotten about this." Also, there were two scenes that could have really sold the scares. The first was the attic where they found the picture from her childhood. I think that was undercut not just by the lackluster lead actors, but because we had already seen enough evidence of the demon to not have there be any doubt it existed. The second was the psychic dude being like, "I have to get out of here immediately" and basically abandoning them. For whatever reason, it kind of fell flat.
Don't get me wrong, I admire the effort for such a low budget production. And it wasn't completely unscary. But it's definitely not something I would ever bother revisiting.
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