Paranormal Activity

"Paranormal Activity" is demonic possession caught on tape; a YouTube "Poltergeist" with time stamps, recording the evil that comes out when we're sleeping. The poster used a screen grab from the "real" video footage - a couple, staring in terror at a disembodied shadow on their open bedroom door. Pretty scary stuff. So how do they amp it up for the sequel? How about using a dog and a baby? Yup. That'll do it. The shadow is gone, replaced by a half-open door to a well-lit bathroom.

Directed by Tod Williams. Brian Boland, Sprague Grayden, Molly Ephraim, Katie Featherston. Distributed by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 1 hour, 28 mins. Parent's guide: R (some language, brief violent material). Playing at: area theaters.

THREE WEEKS have elapsed since "Paranormal Activity" crept into local theaters on little Internet feet. It's now the No. 1 movie in America, so it is no longer ethically possible for me to ignore it. In my defense, the first week's showings were at midnight, way past my bedtime. Also, the studio did not have a freebie screening for us critics, so I had to pay $10 to see "Paranormal Activity," and about a million commercials for crappy shows on the CW. Why do you people put up with this?

A thin but fairly diverting entry in the low-fi fakeumentary horror genre, Apollo 18 explains what's really on the moon and why the U.S. space program decided against further study. Why? Because a Blair Witch Project filmmaking seminar set up camp there first, that's why! Spanish director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego's exercise in "found" footage scares was produced by Timur Bekmambetov, who directed the popular assassins melee Wanted , which I hated. I didn't hate this one at all. Like Blair Witch and the Paranormal Activity pictures, Apollo 18 offers zero characterization and very little narrative.

LOS ANGELES - Throughout the making of Paramount Pictures' "Paranormal Activity 2," an unsettling specter floated over the production. The apparition had nothing to do with the earlier haunted house blockbuster, a micro-budget thriller that exploded into a pop-culture sensation and grossed more than $107 million in domestic theaters a year ago, becoming one of the most profitable releases in show business history. Instead, the sequel/prequel was haunted by memories of Hollywood's last effort to clone a similar scary story: Artisan's "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2," which took in less than 20 percent of the preceding film's revenues and was so decisively despised by critics and audiences that it tainted 1999's original "Blair Witch Project" by association.

LOS ANGELES - "Paranormal Activity 3" didn't just go bump in the night. It made a ton of noise at the box office with a record-setting, $54 million opening. The third film in Paramount Pictures' low-budget fright franchise, which was No. 1 at the box office, had the biggest debut ever for a horror movie, according to yesterday's studio estimates. It broke the previous record that part two set a year ago with $40.7 million. It's also the biggest opening ever for an October release, topping the $50.35 million Paramount's "Jackass 3D" made last year.

Paranormal Activity 3 , the latest installment in Paramount's low-cost, high-profit thriller franchise, chilled the competition with a $54 million debut weekend to take the top spot in the box-office sweeps. P.A. 3 outperformed its forerunner, Paranormal Activity 2 , which also claimed the top spot on its debut weekend a year ago, but took in only $40.7 mil. The original Paranormal Activity , produced for a reported $15,000 - yes, you read that right, 15 thou - entered Hollywood lore after word of mouth made it the progenitor of a lucrative line.

THE RIVER. 9 tonight, 6 ABC.   HOW FAR WOULD you follow Steven Spielberg? The second much-anticipated series credited to the uber-producer in two days - either the man never sleeps or he's been cloned - tonight's premiere of ABC's "The River," with its shaky, grainy camera shots, "found" footage and dearth of production numbers, bears little resemblance to NBC's "Smash. " But they're both about putting on a show. It's a long-running series, "The Undiscovered Country," that's made explorer and wildlife Dr. Emmett Cole (Bruce Greenwood)

Paranormal Activity , a hyper-low-budget haunted-house horror flick from first-time director Oren Peli, has changed filmmaking forever - if you believe the hype. An impressive, not entirely successful exercise in minimalist filmmaking, the faux-documentary is about a twentysomething couple besieged by a demon. It has an interesting one-man-with-a-camera gimmick and it delivers some real thrills - without any gore and virtually no violence. That's no mean feat, considering that Peli shot the film entirely in his own house over seven days - using just a home video camera - for the ludicrous, bargain-basement cost of $15,000.

Albert Rauber has never been slimed by a green goblin or chased from a haunted house by screaming ghosts, but in his line of work, one can never be sure what to expect. "I was investigating this house in Manville with a psychic," he said. "There had been reports of a ghost in this house and I wanted to get everything on tape. The psychic told me that it would be safer to take notes. Well, I taped the investigation and when I went home to play it back, the tape was blank. " Rauber is a ghostbuster, a self-described investigator of paranormal activity in New Jersey.

THE RIVER. 9 tonight, 6 ABC.   HOW FAR WOULD you follow Steven Spielberg? The second much-anticipated series credited to the uber-producer in two days - either the man never sleeps or he's been cloned - tonight's premiere of ABC's "The River," with its shaky, grainy camera shots, "found" footage and dearth of production numbers, bears little resemblance to NBC's "Smash. " But they're both about putting on a show. It's a long-running series, "The Undiscovered Country," that's made explorer and wildlife Dr. Emmett Cole (Bruce Greenwood)

LOS ANGELES - "Paranormal Activity 3" didn't just go bump in the night. It made a ton of noise at the box office with a record-setting, $54 million opening. The third film in Paramount Pictures' low-budget fright franchise, which was No. 1 at the box office, had the biggest debut ever for a horror movie, according to yesterday's studio estimates. It broke the previous record that part two set a year ago with $40.7 million. It's also the biggest opening ever for an October release, topping the $50.35 million Paramount's "Jackass 3D" made last year.

Paranormal Activity 3 , the latest installment in Paramount's low-cost, high-profit thriller franchise, chilled the competition with a $54 million debut weekend to take the top spot in the box-office sweeps. P.A. 3 outperformed its forerunner, Paranormal Activity 2 , which also claimed the top spot on its debut weekend a year ago, but took in only $40.7 mil. The original Paranormal Activity , produced for a reported $15,000 - yes, you read that right, 15 thou - entered Hollywood lore after word of mouth made it the progenitor of a lucrative line.

A thin but fairly diverting entry in the low-fi fakeumentary horror genre, Apollo 18 explains what's really on the moon and why the U.S. space program decided against further study. Why? Because a Blair Witch Project filmmaking seminar set up camp there first, that's why! Spanish director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego's exercise in "found" footage scares was produced by Timur Bekmambetov, who directed the popular assassins melee Wanted , which I hated. I didn't hate this one at all. Like Blair Witch and the Paranormal Activity pictures, Apollo 18 offers zero characterization and very little narrative.

LOS ANGELES - Two at the Telluride Film Festival, three at the Toronto International Film Festival and one at the Mill Valley Film Festival. If that were a list of trophies for the new movie "127 Hours," which opens Friday, the filmmakers would be overjoyed. In fact, it's a partial tally of people who have collapsed during early screenings of the movie about a real-life hiker who amputated his forearm after a falling boulder pinned his hand in a remote canyon. "I started to feel like I was going to throw up," said Courtney Phelps, who was watching "127 Hours" at a recent Producers Guild of America screening in Hollywood and grew ill just as the amputation scene ended.

Directed by Tod Williams. Brian Boland, Sprague Grayden, Molly Ephraim, Katie Featherston. Distributed by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 1 hour, 28 mins. Parent's guide: R (some language, brief violent material). Playing at: area theaters.

LOS ANGELES - Throughout the making of Paramount Pictures' "Paranormal Activity 2," an unsettling specter floated over the production. The apparition had nothing to do with the earlier haunted house blockbuster, a micro-budget thriller that exploded into a pop-culture sensation and grossed more than $107 million in domestic theaters a year ago, becoming one of the most profitable releases in show business history. Instead, the sequel/prequel was haunted by memories of Hollywood's last effort to clone a similar scary story: Artisan's "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2," which took in less than 20 percent of the preceding film's revenues and was so decisively despised by critics and audiences that it tainted 1999's original "Blair Witch Project" by association.

"Paranormal Activity" is demonic possession caught on tape; a YouTube "Poltergeist" with time stamps, recording the evil that comes out when we're sleeping. The poster used a screen grab from the "real" video footage - a couple, staring in terror at a disembodied shadow on their open bedroom door. Pretty scary stuff. So how do they amp it up for the sequel? How about using a dog and a baby? Yup. That'll do it. The shadow is gone, replaced by a half-open door to a well-lit bathroom.

Movies Opening This Week Conviction See Steven Rea's preview on this page. Hereafter See Steven Rea's preview on this page. Paranormal Activity 2 More spooky happenings in this sequel to the surprise box-office hit. Stone See Steven Rea's preview on this page. Vision Biopic of Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th-century Benedictine nun who was a Christian mystic, composer, philosopher, playwright, poet, naturalist, scientist, physician, herbalist, and ecological activist.

The searchers were in a nearly pitch-dark, third-floor room in the abandoned Lazaretto quarantine station and hospital when the flashlight on the floor flickered on, then off. No one had touched it. The black-clad group sitting on the dusty floor clocked the time: 10:15 p.m. "We're here to learn about you. We're here to learn from you," said Mark Davis of the Pennsylvania Anomalous Society Team (PAST), a group that researches the history and paranormal activity of area buildings.