Soon the activity becomes increasingly worse and they find themselves being taunted by mysterious spirits.
Wow! This redefines awful in terms Uwe Boll or Ed Wood couldn't dream of.
It looks pretty obvious from the film title and DVD cover that someone's trying to cash in on the success of Paranormal Activity. There is however very little to compare the two. Paranormal Activity is a horror film using familiar universal fears (things that go bump in the night) to scare the audience. Paranormal Ascendancy is a HORRIFIC film using bad film making to scare the audience. It was very scary, just not as the makers intended.
It's hard to conceive how bad this movie is. Every aspect of it (with the possible exception of some of the music) was poorly made. The script, the acting, the plot, the camera work, the editing, the lighting, the sound. All of it was terrible. Utterly terrible.
NO SHOT is framed properly! Characters will be talking to each other and one will barely be in frame. Its as if someone went through the film and cropped each shot randomly.
The entire film has been tinted in a dull grey/green. Its as if the director watched The Matrix and thought "Wow, that was a unique and atmospheric film. Colour tinting my film will surly create a similar effect and be a sure-fire way to success." All it succeeds in doing here however is make the film drab and unwatchable.
The sound levels go up and down more than... actually more than anything. The sound even cuts out at times. Dialogue is muffled and distorted. We seemed to miss entire scenes of dialogue because it was so hard to hear, eventually we would just give up and talk amongst ourselves. It sounded like they were hiding the microphones in weird places like bedding and car doors. There were a lot of loud bangs and rustling that had no connection to the movie, apart from the fact that someone got into bed and a car door was shut.
Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, at one point the picture and audio just disappeared for over a second. Leaving us with a black screen to stare at! Thinking about it, that was probably the most convincing moment of the film.
The script is atrocious and the "action" is so wimpy it could open a burger restaurant chain. The acting seemed to consist of reading the lines off a card held just out of shot.
It does, however, have a quarter-way decent soundtrack. There were small pockets of atmosphere that came purely from the music. How the hell they managed to get permission to use Stevie Wonder's Superstition for the closing credits, we will never know.
The thing about Paranormal Ascendancy is its a bad film in every way, and an utterly unenjoyable film. In the Teacake Society we try to find enjoyable elements in all the bad films we watch, but there is just nothing in this film to smile at. We can usually find something ridiculous or ambitious to share in and enjoy, but Paranormal Ascendancy doesn't go far enough either way. Its just dull poorly made cinema.
In summary: Don't!
D. C.
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