MussoLOLen is Always Right! |

I love horror movies as much as anyone with a strong appetite for cinematic blood, guts, and gore, but there are horror movie sub-genres I don’t touch unless I absolutely have to. These are supernatural movies and Asian horror flicks with ghosts and shit. To me, these movies take the fun away from horror because I get genuinely scared. My vivid imagination doesn’t make it any easier; I remember the most frightening movie scenes the moment I start nodding off to sleep. To recover from a supernatural horror movie, I have to go to bed with the lights on for a week.

To celebrate Halloween, I invited the Hohobags over for candy, alcohol, and horror movies last night. I thought we’d never get to the movie part of the night, but we eventually stopped talking and got around to watching Paranormal Activity, which was followed shortly by Clueless so we could fall asleep to pretty thoughts of pink fur and plaid. (Am I the only one here who’s weirded out by Clueless‘ incestuous plot twist? How come I didn’t spot this when I was in fifth grade? Whatever happened to Alicia Silverstone anyway? And why does my boyfriend withhold his affection every time young Jeremy Sisto comes on screen?) Without looking at the synopsis, I knew I’d probably have trouble sleeping for the next couple of days.

Paranormal Activity is a mumblecore flick about a young middle-class American couple whose lives have been disrupted by some sort of….paranormal activity. To obtain a better understanding of what’s going on, Micah (the boyfriend) placed a camera and hyper-sensitive mic in the bedroom. The idea is for the camera to record whatever happens in their sleep so they can rule out possibilities like childish neighborhood pranks. The first couple of nights play out like a carnival haunted house; creaking doors, a couple of footsteps, etc. Some people might find that corny, but the level of fear in the living room was infectious; we’d jump at the slightest noise and let out a sigh of relief when daylight broke.

Shortly after the videocamera experiment began, Katie (the girlfriend) invited a psychic for some expert advice on the haunting. The psychic tells them that they aren’t being haunted by a ghost; it’s a demon that’s been making things go bump in the night. Moving to a new house won’t help because the demon has been following Katie since childhood, and it will most likely keep bothering them until it gets Katie, their souls, or whatever else it wants from them.

Paranormal Activity teaches men everywhere that there is a right time and a wrong time to put on your macho bullshit act. Seriously – the movie could have been less painful if Micah wasn’t such an idiot. After the psychic left, he insisted on handling things his way and forbade Katie from calling the demonologist referred by the psychic. After all, he’s American and he’s the man of the house – he’s totally in charge of the situation. Micah’s idea of getting rid of the demon was to call it out and challenge it to fisticuffs. I dunno about you, but I’d think twice about challenging a powerful, invisible entity I know next to nothing about. Especially if a psychic explicitly told me not to because pissy demons wouldn’t think twice about killing a human being – especially one so douchey as Micah.

By the end of this film, men who have seen this movie should be able to answer the following pop quiz question correctly:

Which one of these instances is considered the WRONG time to put on your macho bullshit act?

a) Guy tries to make a pass at your girl in a club
b) Burglar enters your house to steal your sweet 55-inch flatscreen LED TV
c) Some asshole puts a dent on your car
d) A demonic entity seems to have invaded your house
e) There’s no such thing as the wrong time to put on my macho bullshit act!

Any guy who doesn’t view life through a haze of testosterone should have answered D. Those who picked E, do humanity a favor – keep doing whatever it is you’re doing until a bunch of angry demons decide to remove you from the gene pool.