Mo’ Movies, Mo’ Movies, Mo’ Movies!
by The PerfessorTags: Area 51, Paranormal Activities, The Forth Kind
This just in, the director who brought us Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli) is set up to next deliver his next film, Area 51, which is exactly what you think it is — another Blair Witch-style film.
According to The Hollywood Reporter
The "Paranormal Activity" writer-director's follow-up, "Area 51," has been picked up for distribution in the U.S. by Paramount Pictures, which also distributed his mega-successful debut.
"Activity," produced for just $11,000, has grossed $106 million dollars in the U.S. in the last three months. It has just begun its release overseas, grossing $7 million over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Well, personally, I hope that this film is handled better than his first foray into “Faux-docudrama†filming, as I really thought that his first outing, well, was a slow starter, not really very scary, and almost a snore-fest. Now I’m not totally opposed to this style of filming (Cloverfield was rather good, as was District 9), I did think that The Blair Witch Project was 76 minutes of bad filming and swearing and five minutes of scary.
Another really good example of how horrible this genre can go wrong was the recently-released The Fourth Kind, which purportedly (re)told the “true†story of an Alaskan psychologist who was studying people who had supposedly been abducted by aliens in Nome Alaska. Quite frankly, I simply didn’t buy the “factualness†of the film. No, I don’t necessarily think that we here on Earth are the only inhabitants of the universe, but I really want to know why folks who see aliens are always in some out-back, rural hard to reach place. Why is it that in all the years of UFOs has one never been spotted over New York City, or Tokyo, or London? And why would a (supposedly) more advanced live form travel billions of miles through space only to kidnap some redneck just to “prob†them (if you know what I mean).
Anyway, the premise of Peli’s new flick is essentially the same, someone “stumbles into†Area 51 and film and/or video is left behind and discovered. Again the premise is that this is “true†film, which of course begs the question of how someone randomly “stumbles†across some of the most protected and secretive Real Estate in the country. Anyway. I’ll probably see that film as well, but only because I expect it will suck, and I do so enjoy trashing bad films.
The Perfessor