Dissemination

Bag of Bones (Mike Garris 2011)

As a ghost story, Bag of Bones differs from many of the recently made ghost stories such as Paranormal Activity or American Horror Story (Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk 2011) in the way that Bag of Bones is a classic ghost story, where the ghosts are sites of memory and index of past traumas and crimes. While Sara Tidwell (the main ghost) is out for revenge, she has to mainly act through others, casting a curse on later generations and getting Mike to act out her vengeance. She only appears in visions and dreams, never directly interacting with the world around her. The world must be set aright again, for as with all classical ghosts time has gone out of joint and only an acknowledgement of past sins can cleanse the past. At the end of the day, Bag of Bones brings nothing new to the genre and seems at times old-fashioned for its proper ghosts. For this reason it also has its own distinct charm.

The Butterfly Effect 2

A less than stellar follow-up to the original, this film does take seriously the premise of the original’s director’s cut, if nothing else. An interesting story but the execution - from acting, directing to camerawork - fails to live up to the original film.

Paranormal Activity 2

Much more successful than the first one, this prequel actually succeeds in being scary. The pacing is much better and the characters much more interesting, creating a narrative which is far more engaging. The scares also work better and the primary use of surveillance cameras means that we do not have to worry about the shaky-cam of the first film. Paranormal Activity 2 makes me think of a quote from Philip K. Dick,

The ultimate in paranoia is not when everyone is against you but when everything is against you. Instead of “My boss is plotting against me”, it would be “My boss’s phone is plotting against me!” Objects sometimes seem to possess a will of their own anyhow, to the normal mind; they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, they get in the way, they show an unnatural resistance to change.

Dead Silence

A reasonably successful horror thriller about ventriloquist dummies, with an interesting combination of ghost and dummy. The acting, especially by Ryan Kwanten, does drag the film down somewhat, though.