Paranormal Entity (2009)

Welp I sure havent done this in a long time. I hope I can remember how. Step one, type as fast as possible. Step two, miss important plot developments because you are trying to think of a joke. Step three, type so fast jokes no longer exist. I want everyone to know that when I do these, and I type in something ludicrous that happens, I am still watching the movie. I am also pounding on the keyboard and literally yelling "WHAT" at my screen. This is why the write ups are actually incomprehensible.
Once more into the brink.
What I Knew: Asylum. Mockbuster of one of my least favorite movies of all time. Either going to be completely unwatchable or stellar in an unironic way. But which one??? There's only one way to find out.
What I Got: 

A 911 Call. Thomas Finley. His family is dead and they killed her. Cinema Verite owns but it doesnt own if you have Parkinsons. Thomas Finley has Parkinsons apparently. He is introducing us to his family, his mom and sister. He put cameras in his mom and sister's room. Because a psychic told him to. Oh, text box. Thomas was charged with the rape and murder of his sister Samantha and a psychic and then killed himself in prison. This film is billed as found footage from his attic. Mirror shot of Finley and he looks like a douchenozzle. His room is a mess. His house is even HENRY-er than the Paranormal Activity house. His sister has a crucifix over her bed and a camera pointing toward it. His mom is catatonic at this point, stroking a sock.
NIGHT ONE. The sister's room. This movie is already making me uncomfortable.  I don't want to watch these women peacefully sleep. The fireplace in the living room is also peacefully sleeping. A phone rings. Answering machine picks up. I hope its not the Dead Tone guy! There's no message left. Come morning, sister is making breakfast while Thomas annoys her. 'Especially when you say my food looks like vomit. That makes me happy. That makes me great.' There is some great verbal sparring here. Tommy thinks the house is haunted by their dead dad I guess. Maybe thats why the mom was stroking a sock. She freaks out when he confronts her about it and she makes him turn the camera off.
Cut to a confessional. The dad, David, was killed a car accident. The mom now pretends to talk to him. At a "wacky store," an old woman told her she could talk to the dead via writing to them. So she did. So far the acting isn't nearly as terrible as the other Asylum pictures I've seen. After the mom did the writing experiment, weird things started happening! Bad stuff! To Samantha! Oh man, I just realized why this is called Paranormal Entity. That's kind of genius. Sick double mockbuster. The mom is adamant that her husband's ghost did not rape Samantha.
Living room. A weird sound occurs. Everyone dizzily rushes off to check it out. A glass flew out of the cabinet and broke itself on the ground. Ghosts are foot, dear readers, supernatural happenings are a must. Tommy assures Samantha he'll protect her.
NIGHT TWO. THE TV TURNED ITSELF ON. THE TV TURNED ITSELF ON. Samantha's crucifix gets knocked off the wall.
In the morning, Thomas and Samantha look incredulously at the crucifix. Thomas gruffly hangs it back up while nearly knocking the camera against the wall. Thomas is trying to rationalize the cross falling by itself. Samantha responds to this with, and I quote, 'Square things don't roll.' The mom gets mad at Thomas for rationalizing. Just because a cross fell down doesn't mean a ghost did it! Thomas swears. The mom gets mad at him for swearing. A phone rings. Thomas finally picks it up. Its a phonecall for someone who doesn't live there anymore! Eery. The mom storms off, I don't know why. If she didn't storm off when Thomas swore why would she storm off when Thomas was on the phone?
Later on Thomas goes looking for his sister and finds her underwear drawer instead. Inside the drawer he finds her diary, which is written in gigantic print. "PLEASE HELP GOD! WHERE ARE YOU???" there's also a scary drawing of a demon with an inverted cross for eyebrows. Thomas then tracks his sister down in the bathroom where he confronts her with a camera. They have a weird relationship. I'm starting to think he did rape and murder his sister. He apologizes for yelling at her earlier. Things are just getting too crazy for Thomas to handle! They make up. His sister looks like a young, bustier Jennifer Carpenter.
NIGHT FIVE. A LAMP TURNS ITSELF ON. The mom calls out for her dead husband. She gets out of bed and wanders into the dark hallway and down to the living room. Remember, at night there are only three cameras: Samantha's room, Mom's room, and Living's room. The mom starts writing to contact David. In the morning, Samantha starts screaming out for Thomas. Someone wrote "UC" on the table in the middle of the night! What could it mean?
Mom is on her laptop. I wonder if she is also watching a terrible movie and summarizing it for her blog. Haha, oh she actually is. She's watching herself the night before, writing in the living room. She doesn't remember doing it at all. Doesn't remember getting up, writing on the table, writing additional things on a paper, or going back to bed. It's 'pretty freaky, mom!' Mom is afraid she's going crazy. Thomas thinks the house is sick. A doctor is coming over as soon as he gets back from vacation.
Samantha confessional time. At first, she felt a presence while she was sleeping but it quickly escalated into sleep paralysis. And then something hit her in the chest like a ton of bricks to pin her down. So she was magically paralyzed and also being pinned down by a ghost. But then she got up and walked over to the light switch to find an empty room. She's got a lot of PTSD symptoms going on.
NIGHT SIX. Samantha's bedroom door opens. $20 says its Thomas. Something nudges the camera and then covers the lens. Samantha gets attacked and screams for Thomas but the door is locked. I guess he tries really hard and it opens to find Samantha alone in her room.
In the morning, the mom is on the phone with the aforementioned doctor. She gives him an eight digit phone number. Mom and Sam then go out while Thomas reviews the footage from the last night on his IBM ThinkPad from 2001. Samantha knocks and yells Thomas but when Thomas opens his door, she's still gone. Her voice keeps calling for Thomas from her room. He opens her closet and is startled by the camera. He starts his inspection and finds something weird under her pillow.  The weird thing he finds is the piece of paper his mom was writing on on night five. The paper, combined with the writing on the table, reads "MARON." I don't know.
NIGHT SEVEN presumably, I missed the card. A phone rings out. Answering machine picks up. It sounds like whispers but I'm sincerely not sure there were any. I think my mind is playing tricks on me. The mom hears loud banging noises and starts screaming. The noises are coming from the attic. None of the lights in the house are working and everyone is really scared. A cabinet door shuts. 'There's something in the room with us,' Thomas screams as the television roars to life. Thomas hears footsteps and looks at the ceiling. There are footprints on the ceiling. He follows them. They lead him to a room but the door slams right as he's about to enter. The tv turns on and the phone starts ringing. Samantha bursts into tears.
Morning time, the footprints are still there on the ceiling. They are made of ash, or so Thomas tells us. The footprints lead into Samantha's room where the crucifix was torn from the wall yet again. The footprints lead to her door but don't continue in. Except on her bed.  Thomas finds the crucifix on the otherside of the room. Square things don't roll. Thomas puts the camera down in what I feel like is supposed to be an allusion to the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford, except Thomas is entirely out of frame. Thomas starts tracing the footprints backwards from her room. He is trying to find their point of origin. They head downstairs to a like industrial looking door. Behind that door is a dumped out urn with foot prints in it. It's his dad's ashes!! He drops the camera again.
Later, Thomas starts trying to clean the footprints off the ceiling. Ah now here comes the famous blender shot. Yes folks, its a two minute shot, one take, of a blender. Meanwhile, off screen, Thomas listens to the answering machine message from last night. It's just static. I still think I hear voices in it. Oh no, something moved the camera to capture both the blender and the coffee machine. Fade to black.
That night, Thomas finds his mom and his sister scared and sleepless in the living room. Thomas suggests they go to a motel to sleep until the doctor gets there. His mom says that she's going to stand up to the ghost and refuses to let it push her out of her own home! Thomas offers to stay there alone and tape the house by himself until they come back. The mom then backs down and takes Samantha to a hotel. Thomas promises to leave if something really bad happens to him. I'm still boggled about how they managed to make a sequel to Entity while still making a mockbuster. They leave and thomas is now alone. He goes through his tool box which is apparently stuff you make traps out of. Seriously, there's just like duct tape and lead pipes and fishing line and bells in there. So, Thomas makes some tripwires with bells attached and strings them across important doorways. He turns the cameras on for the night and checks the doors and windows. It would be much nicer if this film was better lit. I understand the limitations of their budget and the aesthetic they're trying to achieve/recreate but really this one thing would vastly improve my enjoyment of the movie. Thomas has been setting the cameras and checking the doors for minutes now, its been longer than the Blender Shot.
NIGHT EIGHT. Thomas' foot is in front of his handicam that he has pointed towards the hallway. He hears a noise, picks up the camera, and investigates. The hallway bell didn't get set off. He checks Sam's room and a chair slides into the bell. He scampers down the hallway and the hallway bell snaps off its fishing line and flies toward him. He scampers further into what I can only assume is a bathroom while something chases and bangs on the door. The phone rings and Thomas, the idiot he is, opens the door with some kind of monster outside of it to pick it up. Mom is calling Thomas. She says it followed her! Thomas tells her to  come home as fast as she can.
They get home soon and Thomas lets them in. The mom repeats, 'it followed us to the hotel.' It was in the room with them, in the bed, and it attacked Samantha. Samantha looks exhausted and in a deal of pain, physically and emotionally. Mom and Samantha crawl into bed while Mom tells Thomas and the camera what happened. She felt something was breathing in her ear. She looked at Samantha and it looked like something was pinning her down again and then that something dragged Sam off the bed. The mom feels hopeless and powerless in the face of their enemy.
NIGHT THIRTEEN. Thomas goes to check on Samantha before she goes to sleep. As she drifts off, her blankets are slipped off, revealing her in her underwear. Thomas is sitting out side of her bedroom keeping guard, I guess. He hears her call his name and he heads out into her room to find her missing. He starts to hear banging again as he starts to hunt for her. She's nowhere to be found in the house but the front door is open. Thomas heads outside, calling her name. He creeps around a big boulder that is apparently just chilling in his front yard. This scene is pretty effective. It feels like we are lost in a forest. Really getting a Blair Witchy vibe from this maroon wandering around his front yard. He decides to head back inside. Once there, he finds that the attic door is open and the ladder is extended. Thomas has only one choice, go into the scariest room in the house. He starts to climb the ladder and gets immediately out of breath. This dude is completely gassed by the fifth step. The attic seems empty. The central air unit looks like a cyberpunk octopus. What is a cinderblock doing in the attic? Thomas finds Samantha standing in the corner of the attic, staring into space with her back to him. Thomas turns her aroudn and her eyes are wide open. Thomas jerks her and she blinks, waking up. She has no idea how she got up in the attic.
That afternoon, Samantha is sleeping on the couch when Thomas comes to check on her. She is non-respondant. Thomas calls a Mrs. McKenzie, the previous owner of the house. He asks her if anyone named "MARON" died in the house. She doesn't know what he's talking about. Samantha starts screaming. She's taking a bath and screaming. I guess a ghost attacked her. Entity was really a great movie. Thanks for reminding me, Paranormal Entity.
Mom is on the phone with someone, trying to get help for Samantha. She's asking whoever she's on the phone with for a medication. I have no idea what the medication would be for or who would take it. Meanwhile, Thomas checks up on Sam again but she's sleeping. You'd think after getting attacked by ghosts like thirteen times, you could stop sleeping alone. Thomas goes to tuck her in and notices bruises on her thighs. He then hears his mom crying. She's lying on the floor by her bed nursing a tumbler of whiskey. She blames herself for Samantha's condition.
NIGHT SIXTEEN. Mom passed out fully dressed. A bunch of loud bangs rouse her from sleep. She sits up, her door spookily opens, and she makes her way from her room to the living room again. Just like night five. Except this time, instead of going into the living room, she just stands in the hallway way too long for it to remain interesting. Somewhere between the hallway and the living room she picked up a knife. Her bedroom door slams. This wakes Thomas up and he finds his mom standing in front of him, having slit her wrists.
NIGHT TWENTY THREE. Thomas is silhouetted like a criminal in one of those exposes on Dateline. His mom is in the hospital on suicide watch. Thomas feels guilty about neglecting his mom in favor of ghost hunting, so he's shooting her a monologue as an apology. Cut to Samantha sitting on the couch and Thomas filming her. The door knocks and the lights flicker. At the door is the doctor the mom had been calling. If he could have, he would have been there sooner. The doctor wants to investigate Samantha's room. The doctor is just wandering around looking 'mystical.' I wish he was looking 'Mystikal' because this movie needs a rap number and what better than Shake That Ass imo.
The doctor comes to some conclusions and lets them know the thing haunting them will follow the two of them. There is a powerful negative presence in the house and its attracted to Samantha. The doctor thinks that the mom, in trying to contact the dead dad, invited in an evil entity who possessed the spirit of the dead dad in order to rape and murder Sam. Thomas shows the doctor the writing on the paper and the table. MARON is germanic for nightmare. A nightmare is an evil spirit who attacks women while they sleep and it is similar to the incubus who rapes women while they sleep. Fade to black.
Samantha is screaming, screaming, screaming. Thomas is screaming. The doctor is lying dead on the ground. Samantha is still screaming and Thomas has gone hunting for her. Samantha is being tortured in her room. She gags and something goes thud. More and more things keep going thud. Thomas picks up the camera and Samantha is dead. Some text scrolls. Sam is dead, the mom killed herself for good, Thomas got arrested, etc. This is the longest pre-credits black screen I have ever seen. Haha, there are no credits. Just the THIS IS FICTIONAL warning and (c) Asylum.

How I Felt:
I sincerely liked this movie much better than Paranormal Activity. The addition of sexuality to the film did not harm it. Its been a long time since I last watched The Entity, the 1982 Sidney J. Furie film about ghost rape, but I remember liking it a lot too. A lot more happened in this movie than in Paranormal Activity too. It was a lot more "ghosts doing spooky stuff" and a lot less "lifestyles of the HENRY and boring." The acting was bad but not lifeless like the other Asylum films I've seen and the handicam gimmick played heavily in the film's favor. I'm predisposed to love cinema verite and found footage movies and that style of film making can be used effectively to hide a lot of flaws in filmmaking, acting, directing, continuity, etc.
I was wrong about it being GREAT or TERRIBLE as it was squarely in between, but it definitely was not bad. Further more, watching it and typing about it was really fun. I forgot how much I enjoyed that bit.
Sequel:
Its not necessary but I'd watch one if it was on Netflix Instant.