The Best Eight Bucks I Ever Spent
By Landon EvansonThere were screams coming from all directions. To my left there was a young woman with her knees tucked to her chest and a jacket pulled over her face hoping that if she didn’t look, it would go away. A glance to the right revealed a group of three gasping for breath, and through the darkness I glimpsed out at a mass of humanity to see eyes and mouths covered with trembling hands. Despite the chaotic churning of voices, I distinctly heard “Ohhh shit!” and “Oh my God!” as heads shook in disbelief.A portrait of sheer terror had been painted before my very eyes simply because Katie Featherston made the mistake of falling asleep with a leg dangling off her bed.That chilly October night nearly eight years ago provided a clear truth – the money I dropped for admission to Paranormal Activity (2007) would be the best eight bucks I’d ever spent.I’ll never forget the feeling I had the first time I watched Teri McMinn plopped onto a meat hook or witnessed Linda Blair spider-walk down a flight of stairs; nor can I erase the surge that ran through me as Featherston was dragged from her slumber, left to unleash a desperate, blood-curdling call to her boyfriend (Micah Sloat) as she vanished into the night.The greatest experience a horror fan can ever hope for is to settle in at a theatre filled with like-minded individuals and lay eyes on a scene that while never communicated, is inherently understood by every soul in the room that what they just saw would stand the test of time. One of those rare moments when each cosmic tumbler clicks into place and you are offered the briefest of glimpses at nirvana.Years before I took my seat in that theatre, writer and director Oren Peli heard a loud thump in his home, the very dwelling where Paranormal Activity was filmed over 10 days in 2006. Peli discovered that a large box of laundry detergent had fallen from its shelf onto the floor. It had been tucked back too far against the wall for it to have tipped on its own, and no one had been in the room to knock it from its perch. A seed was planted that would blossom into one of the most lucrative horror franchises in history.The fruition of that inspiration led to Paranormal Activity, which intrigued a frenzied audience eager to be frightened, and compelled me to join them that very evening. Tumblers.