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Paranormal Activity 4's Directors Discuss Their Demons

Paranormal Activity 4's Directors Discuss Their Demons

The following has been pieced together from notes found on the desk of former Bleeding Cool contributor Hannah Shaw-Williams, on Thursday 18th October 2012. Ms. Shaw-Williams has not been seen since.

If you're unfamiliar with the Paranormal Activity series so far, then here's what you need to know: demons are generally bad but luckily are quite photogenic. The fourth movie opens with a clip from the end of Paranormal Activity 2 before moving swiftly six years into the future and into the lives of what appears to be an entirely unrelated family. They lead happy, normal lives until a single mother and her young son move in across the street, only for the mother to be taken to hospital with a mysterious illness and young weirdo Robbie to be left in the care of his new neighbours.

If you are familiar with the series, you can probably guess where things go from there.

I recently went along to a nearly-finished rough cut of Paranormal Activity 4, which is out now on general release, and afterwards I engaged in a long-distance talk with the film's directors, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, to talk a bit about how far the series has come and where it might go to next.

The next day, the phone upon which the conversation had been recorded finally gave up the ghost. A tragedy, yes, but not an insurmountable one since all the data was saved on an independent memory card. However, two days of hard work on two separate computers failed to recover the audio file with the interview on it

Look, we're not saying that all that talk of demons and symbols and rituals, pertaining to a film about people using technology to record supernatural phenomena, somehow corrupted both the phone and the memory card along with all the files on it. That would be silly. Right?

However, thanks to my excellent memory for salient details*, as well as the immediate debriefing with Brendon that follows every interview, we still have quite a bit to share. Let's start with a completely random topic that was discussed, which bears no relation whatsoever to my current situation or the fact that a lamp in the next room just came on by itself. How about the fact that the demonic symbols used in the film are real.

This is a subject which took my interest after discovering that Scott Derrickson refused to use any genuine demon lore or symbols in Sinister for fear of cursing his own film. Paranormal Activity 4 delves a little deeper into the series mythology, which developed significantly in Joost and Schulman's previous instalment with the discovery of a coven of demon-worshipping witches. In Paranormal Activity 4 this thread continues with mysterious symbols and strange chanting from the house across the street, and so I was curious as to whether it's the genuine article or nice, safe gobbledegook.

According to Joost and Schulman, they did have certain concerns about bringing demonic forces down upon their film – it just wasn't enough to stop them from trying it. The mythology in the films is based on real demonic summoning rituals, including words so evil that if spoken three times they will bring hellbeasts to Earth. Well, hellbeasts or Michael Keaton in panstick, whichever you consider to be scarier.

The line between reality and fiction is a fine one, it seems, and especially so for some fans of the series. I asked Joost and Schulman about how found footage has evolved over the years. For example, 1999's The Blair Witch Project was marketed as a documentary and had many audience members convinced that they were watching the last moments of the three filmmakers, whereas nowadays found footage is generally sold in the spirit of, "we know you know it's fake, but let's pretend, eh?" Does that explain the continued appeal of the genre, or is there more to it?

The answer came as a bit of a surprise. Apparently there are people out there, a significant number, who remain convinced that what they see in the Paranormal Activity films is real. Joost and Schulman have had people write to them saying as much, despite the red carpet element that has grown along with the series' popularity, and of course the devastating effects of the internet on maintaining such an illusion. I can only hope that these people are wrong, since Bleeding Cool contributor Patrick Dane recently interviewed Katie Featherston, who plays the main antagonist of the later films. Come to think of it, I haven't heard from Dane recently…

He's probably fine.

On the subject of what's real and what's not, anyone who had heard of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman before their attachment to the Paranormal Activity franchise most likely had a little film called Catfish to thank. Catfish was and still is a film best left entirely unspoiled (the film's tagline is "Don't let anyone tell you what it is"), so I won't go into details here about Catfish's subject matter or plot. Since its release in 2010, however, Catfish has been the subject of a raging debate as to whether the events depicted in the documentary are genuine or faked. Joost and Schulman stated in the interview, as they have always claimed and likely always will, that what you see in Catfish is 100% true, with no embellishments or fictionalised elements. They also say it was a claim that could have cost them the job of directing Paranormal Activity 3.

According to the directing duo, the original reason they were hired was that the Paramount Studio heads in charge of the franchise had seen Catfish and believed the whole thing was simply a well-shot ruse. On that basis, who better to put at the helm of a found footage franchise than the pair who made one of the most famous "faked" documentaries of the past decade. When it came to the interview, however, Joost and Schulman never wavered from their position of Catfish being 100% real.

Apparently everyone at Paramount Studios is still convinced that Catfish is fake, and thereofre were happy to hire Joost and Schulman despite not extracting a "confession". To date, the $5 million budget Paranormal Activity 3 has grossed over $100 million, and if the latest instalment does only half as well then its likely the franchise could continue for several more films. The directors' next project is an adaptation of Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang, but they also said that they would be happy to return to the directing chair if Paranormal Activity 5 goes ahead.

If you'd like to know more, you can also read Brendon Connelly's interview with producer Jason Blum, as well as the Bleeding Cool review of Paranormal Activity 4.

Now if you'll excuse me, it sounds like there's someone knocking at the front door. I'll be right back.

* 'Salient details' unfortunately do not include the current location of my house keys.


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Hannah Shaw-WilliamsAbout Hannah Shaw-Williams

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