How did you come to the conclusion that you were going to integrate spirit photography into this film? Was that already in the works, or how did that come about, and how did you go about deciding how that would look? Spirit photography sort of evolved, because we always started with the idea of the camera.
Started with the idea of the tapes and the camera being the vehicle to show us another dimension. As we researched it felt very natural to get into spirit photography. It was really just one of those natural things that we sort of fell into. In terms of how we were going to make it look, that we did a lot of research on.
That has these sort of ghostly images. Old black-and-white images, especially, where you see the sort of haunted image in the background. It felt like that was played out. I do love the idea that there are these devices, these cameras, that just give you a sense of another realm.
How did you come to the decision to make on what the character of Toby would look like, you made him look real and organic, and more rooted. It looks like [the demon] builds upon itself. How did you come to the conclusion of what Toby would look like on this camera? The demon always started out like a child, like a baby. The more attention you give it, the more fear you show, the larger it gets. It has yet to sort of cause fear in the house….
That was really the evolution of it all here. It was working with my artists, working with ILM. Where do you go from here? Do you keep the door open for more? Expand the sub menu Digital. Expand the sub menu Theater. Expand the sub menu VIP. Expand the sub menu More Coverage. Expand the sub menu More Variety. Switch edition between U. Asia Global. To help keep your account secure, please log-in again.
You are no longer onsite at your organization. The postfeminist qualities of Katie and Kristi appear even more pronounced when contrasted with earlier generations of women in their family. We meet their mother Julie and grandmother Lois in Paranormal Activity 3 , which portrays career woman Julie in the late 80s, supporting her boyfriend and daughters Katie and Kristi, much to the disapproval of her domineering mother.
In effect, Lois borrowed against a future male descendent, creating a hereditary obligation shouldered unknowingly by her granddaughters when Kristi bears a son.
Even outside of biological motherhood, Katie and Martine, the domestic worker in PA2 , also participate in reproductive labor. Katie, although child-free, expresses her desire to be a teacher and shows genuine affection for her baby nephew; she later becomes a kind of foster-mother of demon-children in Paranormal Activity 4.
Qualities of intensive mothering, such as sentimental value, nurturing and intense emotional involvement, are not lost when caretaking work is shifted to an employee. Romero , citing Silbaugh. The ironic hierarchies of gender, race, and class in Paranormal Activity 2 crystallize around the figure of Martine, whom Ali sincerely refers to as a part of the family when she learns that her father Dan has fired her.
Patriarch Dan exercises his power over Martine when he learns that, despite his instructions, she has continued to burn smudges of dried herbs around their house in her efforts to cleanse the space of the evil spirits she believes abide there. Yet the figure of the Latina domestic worker, although marginalized in her classed and raced position within the domestic economy, also functions similarly to other female figures such as Katie, Kristi, and Alex: as a source of information about the demon.
In his desperation, Dan recalls the fired care worker back to his home to ask for her help; Martine obligingly teaches Dan how to shift the demonic attention from Kristi to Katie, expertise that she appears to have acquired in addition to her domestic skills. Descended from the Gothic novel, paranormal horror trains attention on the private home as a domestic site: in which families live, in which power hierarchies co-exist with complex emotional ties, and in which paranormal beings terrorize humans, showing that daily life is both normal and paranormal.
Ordinariness gone awry is the mode of many horror movies, and the Paranormal Activity series is no exception. Everything in these movies appears unremarkable, even generic, from the houses themselves—newly built suburban tract homes—to the standard bland furnishings and costumes see Figures 8 and 9. Nothing stands out as unique, making it easy to imagine that the movie took place in a real home and that it could take place in any home.
These lifestyles appear to be typical upper-middle-class, white, and suburban, with plenty of square footage as befits the expansionist American dream of home ownership. The houses of Katie and Kristi are so similar that they appear interchangeable; moreover, the sisters themselves are also ordinary. For many viewers, their ordinariness led to difficulties in distinguishing Katie from Kristi, particularly when viewing the movies one year apart, as they were released—both have dark hair and are close in age, and they have similar names see Figure Martine performs domestic work as well, thus demonstrating that one mothering figure can replace another.
Instead of having to telephone in trade orders, suddenly Internet brokerage account holders could transact—and get rich—with a mouse click, almost by magic. This practice is a key example of the financialization of American life since the 90s, as Martin demonstrates, in that it features the privatization and individualization of a finance-centered livelihood while transposing the risks and anxieties of the market into the domestic space of the home Careers in finance have received scholarly attention in recent decades, often focusing on stockbrokers working for financial services corporations; hypermasculinity accompanies the moral perils of high-risk investing from the first Wall Street film , to the more recent Margin Call , a timespan that the Paranormal series bridges in its four movies see Negra and Tasker; Annesley and Scheele.
But distinct from these representations of the high finance fraternity in their sleek designer suits, popular images of day trading emphasize the solitary, at-home trader. Micah sports casual clothes, including a t-shirt promoting Coin Net an online precious metals exchange see Figure The ordinary-looking lifestyle in the first movie can also be explained in part by the fact that Oren Peli, the filmmaker, used his own new house as its location, including an enormous rear-projection television he bought with the proceeds of his own day trading career in the 90s Turek.
That abstraction away from materiality is in itself disconcerting; maybe if there were more conventional splatter visuals the movie would feel more grounded, more material. These horror movies foster affective responses appropriate to the recession-strapped 21st century, an era that few will deny is post-cinematic. The Paranormal Activity films, as I have shown, exemplify postfeminist recessionary texts in their representations of gender and the domestic; they are also post-cinematic in their interest in the themes and technologies as well as the structures of feeling of the digital age.
The video cameras in the movies digitize their human subjects, thus turning something we might call private reality into data. The domestic digital aesthetics of the Paranormal Activity franchise are integral to the troubling of the public-private boundary that Benson-Allott indicates; the home-made and faux footage only escalates the horror in these movies as it depicts the penetration of invisible, financialized demon capital into the refuge of the family home.
In Paranormal Activity , breaking the rules also carries strong punishments. Beyond their context within the copyright wars, however, the Paranormal films also underscore the dire consequences of defying the rules of debtor capitalism in the digital age. Released during the foreclosure crisis in , Paranormal Activity portrays the horror of a debt that cannot be evaded or expunged, which can lead to the repossession of a cherished object such as the family home, or in this case, a child.
Through her reproductive labor and assisted by Martine and Katie, Kristi must assume the debt of her grandmother Lois, and pay the demon-creditor what is owed. While at least the belief in upward mobility has long been taken for granted in American life, now it is mainly capital that moves, and most often it is leaving.
The Paranormal Activity movies allegorize the way in which possession and re-possession have become horrific concepts in the 21st century. The mobility and invisibility of the demon, its ability to navigate the home unseen and to inhabit the body through possession, echoes the insidious, digitized mobility of transnational finance capital, which has forced so many homeowners into foreclosure and repossession. Moreover, the digitization, agility, and decentering of financial systems and instruments make them harder to see or resist; the Paranormal Activity movies portray the demon as an elusive, disembodied, yet personalized evil entity.
Over the next few nights, the paranormal activity is excessive and intense. They eventually call Dr. Fredrichs back to the house, but he is overwhelmed by the demonic energy upon entering. He apologetically leaves despite their pleas, stating that his presence only makes the demon angrier. The bleak reality causes the couple to lose all hope, which makes the demon strong enough to be able to pull Katie out of the bedroom and bite her, causing her to become fully possessed. Micah discovers the bite mark and deciding events are too out of control to remain in the house, he packs to head to a motel.
Just as they are set to leave, the possessed Katie insists they will be okay now. The following night, Katie gets out of bed and stares at Micah for two hours before going downstairs. After a moment of silence, Katie screams for Micah; he abruptly rushes to help her. Afterward, Micah exclaims in pain, causing Katie to stop screaming, and then heavy footsteps are heard coming upstairs.
Suddenly, Micah's body is violently hurled at the camera, which is knocked off the tripod, revealing a demonic Katie standing in the doorway. She slowly walks into the room, stained with blood, and crawls to Micah's body, then looks up at the camera with a grin. As she lunges toward the camera, her face takes on a demonic appearance just as the scene cuts to black. Epilogue text states that Micah's body was discovered by the police on October 11, , and Katie's whereabouts remain unknown.
The entire house is trashed except for their infant son Hunter's bedroom. Daniel installs security cameras throughout the house after the vandalism, which capture many strange occurrences.
Martine Vivis Cortez , the Hispanic family housekeeper and nanny, goes into Hunter's room after hearing a loud bang and senses a demonic presence in his room.
She takes him downstairs and attempts to cleanse the house of "evil spirits", but when Daniel arrives home and catches her burning sage, Martine is fired. Kristi believes that their home is haunted and tells Daniel. Daniel reviews the footage but dismisses her claims. Kristi talks to her sister Katie Katie Featherston about being tormented by a demon when they were little girls.
Daniel's daughter, Ali Molly Ephraim , begins investigating the mysterious occurrences and discovers that humans can make deals with demons for wealth or power by forfeiting the soul of their first-born son.
She also discovers that Hunter was the first male to be born on Kristi's side since the s. The violence quickly escalates; the family's German shepherd, Abby, becomes aware of the demon's presence and is attacked. Daniel and Ali take Abby to the veterinarian, leaving Kristi alone with Hunter. When Kristi checks on the baby, the demon assaults her and drags her down to the basement, where she stays for an hour. Finally, the basement door opens and a possessed Kristi walks out.
The following day, Ali is home with Kristi, who will not get out of bed. She finds the basement door covered in scratches and the word meus Latin for "Mine" , etched into it. Ali goes upstairs to check on Hunter and sees Kristi there, with a strange bite mark on her leg. When Ali tries to get Hunter, Kristi furiously orders her not to touch him. Now terrified, Ali begs Daniel to come home. After he arrives, she shows him the footage of Kristi's attack. He immediately calls Martine, who prepares a cross to exorcise the demon; and tells them that Kristi will have no memory of being possessed.
Since the curse can only be transferred to a blood relative, Daniel tells Ali he is going to pass the demon onto Katie, so that Kristi and Hunter will be safe. Ali begs him not to because it is unfair to Katie, but Daniel sees no other way to save his wife and son.
That night, when Daniel tries to use the cross on Kristi, she attacks him, and all the house lights go out. Using the handheld camera's night vision he finds that Kristi and Hunter have disappeared. Furniture starts to topple over, and the chandeliers begin to shake. Daniel chases Kristi into the basement, where she attacks him. After he touches her with the cross she collapses and the house shakes violently.
Daniel hears demonic growls and screams and finally, the shaking stops. Daniel puts Kristi to bed and burns a photo of a young Katie the same photo Micah Sloat later finds in the attic of his and Katie's house in the first film. Three weeks later, Katie visits and explains that strange things have started happening at her house.
She then returns home to her boyfriend Micah. On October 9, the night after Micah is killed, a possessed Katie breaks into Daniel and Kristi's home and kills Daniel by snapping his neck while he watches TV. She then kills Kristi in Hunter's room, violently hurling her at the camera, and takes the baby. She leaves, cradling Hunter, and the screen fades to black as Hunter's crying turns into laughter. An epilogue text states that Ali was on a school trip, and she found the bodies of Daniel and Kristi upon her return home and that Katie and Hunter's whereabouts remain unknown.
Five years later, in November , Alex Nelson lives in a wealthy suburb of Henderson, Nevada with her father Doug, mother Holly, and little brother Wyatt. When their new neighbor falls ill and is taken to the hospital, her son, Robbie, is left in the care of the family.
One night while Alex is sleeping, her boyfriend Ben's computer starts recording her laptop webcam, and he sees Robbie getting into the bed with her. The next day, Wyatt tells Alex about Robbie's friend, Tobi. After strange events happen, Alex and Ben set up cameras all over the house.
On the third night, the strange happenings escalate until one day, Alex finds a trail of toys that leads to a closet. She finds Robbie, who says, " He doesn't like you watching us," as a chandelier falls and almost kills her.
On the sixth night, Alex sees many cars parked outside Robbie's house, and goes to check it out, but runs back home after being caught by a strange woman in a black gown.
The next day, Wyatt has an encounter with an invisible force. Wyatt later reveals a green symbol on his back to Alex and Ben and tells them, "I had to meet him. They learn that to complete the possession ritual, Wyatt would need to spill the blood of a virgin - Alex is revealed to be a virgin. The next day, the boys go to Robbie's house. Alex follows them; Katie from the original film , presumably Robbie's mother, has returned from the hospital.
Wyatt explains to Alex that Katie knew he and Robbie were both adopted and that Wyatt's real name is "Hunter". Katie told Wyatt his old family wants him back.
0コメント