Needless to say, it’s tricky to pull this off well. Cannibal Holocaust was the first to do it, shocking the world by being so convincing that the filmmakers had to present the cast in court to prove that they hadn’t in fact been killed and eaten by Amazonian natives. Later there was The Blair Witch Project, with its ingenious viral marketing that led many to believe that it too was real.

And then along came Paranormal Activity. [Rec] and Cloverfield were released around the same time, and their influence shouldn’t be ignored, but it was Paranormal Activity that captured the proverbial lightning in a bottle and led to a flood of successors and imitators, some better than others - last year’s terrifying Zoom séance Host shows its influence is still strong.

Paranormal Activity was written and directed by Oren Peli, who went on to make The Chernobyl Diaries and TV series The River. It’s the story of a suburban couple plagued by noises in the night. Katie (Katie Featherstone) has been experiencing strange phenomena on and off throughout her life, and now that she’s living with her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat) he’s intrigued and wants to catch the spooky happenings on tape. With the camera all but glued to his shoulder, he’s determined to get something ‘cool’, but Katie’s rather less enthusiastic. At night he sets the camera up to watch over them as they sleep.

It starts out small; a door moving by itself here, loud footsteps there. But when a psychic (Mark Fredrichs) warns them that the presence in their home is a demon that feeds on negative energy and is not to be trifled with, things rapidly go downhill as Micah and Katie clash and the demonic activity starts getting aggressive and dangerous.

Full disclosure: I’d never actually watched this before this review, nor any of the sequels. As a result, I’m much more familiar with the tropes it originated, so it does lose a little something when watched now after having seen so many films make use of the gimmicks. There’s also the fact that I don’t have a special home entertainment room with dimmable lights and perfect acoustics; it’s best watched in a cinema where you’re a captive audience and there are no distractions. Between cars outside and a humming fridge and my neighbour sneezing (bless you, Steve), it wasn’t quite as easy to lose myself in it. I watch with the subtitles on, so occasionally they’d read “(faint scraping)” and I’d just be like “OK, I’ll take your word for it!”.

That said, I was still engrossed by the time the haunting was in full swing. Peli knows how to build a mood and how to subvert expectations; there were several moments where I fully expected a jump scare but none came, a refreshing change from the BANG-BANG-BANG approach that it’s easy to fall back on. There’s also no soundtrack, which you barely notice at first until you’re watching the couple sleep and you realise how eerie it is. This keeps tension high and the mood uncomfortable, so that when a jump-scare does happen it feels earned. For most of the film, the haunting is quite subtle and understated, as Peli resists the temptation to throw everything at you at once.

Featherstone and Sloat inhabit the roles perfectly, which makes sense given that this was a largely improvisational shoot. They had set story beats laid out, but the interaction and dialogue was largely in the actors’ hands, and they did a great job with it. They have great chemistry together! Katie comes across as vulnerable, certainly the more scared of the two, but when Micah crosses the line she’s no wet blanket and sets him straight firmly. Micah was awful – not in terms of performance, of course, just in his manner and behaviour. He comes across as a not-quite-grown-up frat boy, someone used to getting his own way who sulks and acts out when he’s not in control. He’s the Dunning-Kruger Syndrome personified. Why call in an expert when you can read one book and deal with it yourself by using a camera and covering your floor in talcum powder. I know if I were a demon I'd be shaking in my cloven booties.

It’s Micah’s arrogance that stops the film from falling into the Put The Damn Camera Down trap. Of course he’s carrying it around with him into the attic, because he’s invincible and he’ll kick the demon’s ass if it shows its face. It’s all the more effective, then, when he does finally Put The Damn Camera Down; you know it’s finally sinking in that they’re in serious trouble.

So does it hold up after all these years? I’d say yes, for sure! If you can watch it in a quiet room and devote your attention to it, then you’ll reap the benefits. It won’t feel as fresh as it used to now that we’ve seen so many variations on the theme, but it still has the power to suck you in, creep you out and make you jump at all the right moments.

★★★★

• Commentary with Oren Peli: An insight into how the movie was made, which effect was the most expensive/tricky to pull off, and how Steven Speilberg was too scared to watch it in one go!

• Commentary with the Scarred For Life podcast hosts: A fun discussion of the movie, with character analysis and a post-9/11 political interpretation.

• Two Alternate Endings: The festival cut and the original cut. One somehow manages to be both shocking and flat at the same time, while the other works almost as well as the proper ending but runs on a little too long to be effective. 

• Interview with Oren Peli: Goes over a lot of the same ground as the commentary.

• Interviews with the cast: An insight into the unconventional audition process, how well they got along and how they enjoyed having proper input into the characters.

• Deleted Scene: Given how much footage they reportedly cut, it’s really disappointing to see only one deleted scene. And that’s not really deleted, it’s an extended scene with more footage of the possessed Diane from the website. Nice and gruesome, though.

• No gag reel, I demand more gag reels