Ron's Popcorn Reviews.com

Several weeks ago when I reviewed the sleeper hit Paranormal Activity, the movie was huge. Now, in the beginning of November, it’s starting to become popular out of proportion. I saw the movie in the middle of October, when it had just been released wide and had done wonders at the box office. Now, the viral phenomenon is just becoming annoying. There is an article involving Paranormal Activity on MSN at least once a week. One of them involved people searching for an obituary for Micah Sloat, one of the protagonists of PA. I understand that every so often a movie comes along that instantly embeds itself in pop culture, only to eventually fade away and become annoying (Borat in 2006 for example), but the brilliant marketing campaign that made PA so unique is now becoming redundant.

The first I ever heard of PA was when I saw a poster for it on Apple Trailers. I wasn’t interested enough to click on the link but I did notice it. Then, I started hearing about the movie being sold out at midnight screenings and doing great in New York and Los Angeles during its limited release. Very soon, the first TV ads started appearing, using that ingenious marketing campaign. I thought it was very original and clever that people could actually go online and click a “Demand It” button. Yes, for a while PA was intriguing. After not just weeks, but already over a month of hype, I’m starting to get tired of just hearing the title. Just this past week The Fourth Kind was released (I have not seen it so no comment) and I saw headers online reading, “Is it the next Paranormal?"

All the reviews of The Fourth Kind make some kind of reference to PA. By the time the film is released on DVD, people will most likely get tired of hearing about it too.

This leads me to my next annoyance. As I have stated in my review and in this blog entry several times, the marketing campaign is pure genius. Now it’s becoming overkill. There’s an article on Fandango saying that people who submit there names on the movie’s website might get there name included on the DVD release. WTF! Don’t you think they might be overdoing just a bit? Instead of pushing the movie in people’s faces, let them discover it. It’s impossible to go on Rotten Tomatoes without seeing an article mentioning PA. Every chance they get, Paramount finds a new way to push the “little scream fest that could.” It’s already insanely profitable! It’s probably the best investment in movie history! $15,000 dollars returns $100 million! Give it a rest!

And the movie isn’t even that great. I wouldn’t mind if An Education, a movie exponentially better than PA, finally started getting some mainstream attention.

I don’t know about you, but I am personally growing tired of Paranormal Activity being the topic of every conversation.