When it hit theaters in fall 2009, Paranormal activity surprised everyone with its low-budget fun and huge box office success. The film was made on a micro-budget of $15,000 by debut director Oren Peli and grossed nearly $195 million worldwide. Here are some spooky facts about the spooky movie that started it all.
Paranormal activity is the third most profitable film of all time.
Often compared to The Blair Witch Project the original due to its low-budget character and enormous box office returns Paranormal activity displaced the earlier horror film in 2009 to become the third most profitable film of all time in terms of return on investment (ROI); it also spawned six sequels.
Oren Peli had never worked on a film before Paranormal activity.
Oren Peli’s background was as a software developer, a skill that gave him the technical know-how to shoot a low-tech film. “I have always been very knowledgeable about computers and software. “One thing that made my life easier is the fact that I figured out very quickly how to edit the film, how to mix the sound and what kind of CGI was in the film,” Peli told in 2009 Moviefone. He used a home camera, filmed in his own home, hired unknown actors to help with the production, and edited together 70 hours of footage.
The film was partly inspired by sounds Peli heard in his own home.
When Peli and his then-girlfriend moved into a new house in San Diego, strange things began to happen. “At night there were strange noises that made us both nervous. “You know, stuff falls off the shelves,” Peli said The Guardian in 2009. He toyed with setting up a camera in their bedroom to see what happened while they slept, then turned that idea into the film. “I found the basic concept of setting up a video camera at night when you’re sleeping and vulnerable quite frightening because it plays on people’s primal fears.”
A classic film played a role in Peli’s own primal fear. “I saw it [The Exorcist] when I was 11,” he said. “It totally scared me. After that, I couldn’t watch any movie that had anything to do with a haunting or a ghost. I was in my mid-teens at the time Ghostbusters came out and even though I knew it was a comedy, I couldn’t handle the idea. I didn’t see another horror movie until I was well into my twenties.”
The filmmaking process was collaborative…
There was no script for the film; Instead, the actors were given plot outlines and largely improvised. Micah Sloat said in an interview that he often provided comic relief and that “Oren reined me in and said, ‘Remember, this is a horror movie.'” In a 2013 interview, actress Katie Featherston recalled the Input she had in designing her character, who didn’t have a job, which didn’t feel right to her. She told Peli, “I can’t just hang around. I have to do something with my life in this film. What if I were a student? I will study English and work towards becoming a teacher.” Peli was on board. “There was a lot of freedom there and that was so exciting and exhilarating for me as an actress,” Featherston said.
The film circulated at film festivals for a few years.
Paranormal activity premiered at Screamfest in Los Angeles in 2007, where Featherston won a best actress award. Producer Jason Blum helped Peli find an agent and they began submitting the film around town looking for a distributor. Although they failed to get the film to Sundance, it was screened at Slamdance, another film festival in Park City, Utah, in January 2008. DreamWorks originally wanted to remake the film, but ultimately decided it was scarier the way it was.
Steven Spielberg was supposedly thinking of him Paranormal activity DVD was haunted.
As urban legend goes, Spielberg, whose DreamWorks Studios was considering distribution Paranormal activityHe took a DVD of the film home to watch, but then panicked when the door to his bedroom locked itself. “So the whole story about how the doors to his bedroom were locked from the inside… I personally believe it,” Peli told Moviefone. “This isn’t something the marketing department came up with before the film was released.” Spielberg famously carried the DVD to work in a garbage bag because he thought it was haunted. Despite the shock, Spielberg loved the film and even suggested a new ending, which audiences eventually saw in the theatrical release.
Peli shot three endings of the film.
Speaking of endings, the video above shows all three endings at once, with the original being twice as long as the others. In the original, police officers come to the house the next day and shoot and kill Katie. The alternate ending shows Katie slitting her throat in a gruesome manner, and the theatrical ending is what most people saw in theaters, with Katie supposedly killing Micah and becoming possessed by the demon. According to Entertainment Weekly, there was also an ending that was never filmed: “A possessed Katie corners Micah and knocks him out with his precious camera as viewers watch from the camera’s perspective.”
Producer Jason Blum received two non-nominations.Paranormal Oscars.
Around the time of Paranormal activityJason Blum worked for Miramax and worked with Peli to help him edit the film. Blum was credited as co-producer of the first film (and its subsequent sequels). In addition to producing other horror franchises such as Insidious And The PurgeBlum received two Best Picture Oscar nominations for his producing work on Damien Chazelles Whiplash (2014) and Jordan Peeles Exit (2017). Blum also received two Emmy Awards for his work as an executive producer on Ryan Murphy’s The normal heart (2014) and Andrew Jareckis The curse: The life and death of Robert Durstboth for HBO.
The film founded the found footage genre.
Although 1999 TThe Blair Witch Project was hardly the first found footage film (many say the distinction falls into the 1980s). Cannibal Holocaust), it sparked new interest in the format. Nevertheless, viewers would have to wait until 2008 Cloverfieldwhich was a modest success, and another year for it Paranormal activity (which was made in 2006) to see how found footage films are becoming a subgenre of their own. Til today The Blair Witch Project Still, it remains the highest-grossing found footage film of all time.
Peli’s next film bombed at the box office.
A few weeks later Paranormal activity became a huge worldwide success in the fall of 2009, Paramount secured the rights to Peli’s next found footage film: Area 51. The film had a budget of $5 million and was delayed for six years, arriving in theaters on May 15, 2015 and playing in limited release for one week at Alamo Drafthouse theaters and on VOD. The film ended up being released in just 16 theaters and only managed to gross $7,556 – far from it Paranormal activity‘s phenomenal ticket sales.
Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin parodied Paranormal activity at the 2010 Oscars.
You know something has entered mainstream pop culture when it’s being parodied, and that’s exactly what Oscar co-hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin did in their opening segment at the 2010 Academy Awards. The assumption was that they happened to share the same hotel bed, and Martin set up a camera to record their sleeping habits. Martin thrashes around all night and eventually gets up and slaps Baldwin. There are no ghosts here; just terrible bedfellows.
Paranormal creature tried to capitalize on it Paranormal activityThe success.
Two months later Paranormal activity was released, a film called Paranormal creature has used a similar surveillance format to create a story that may or may not be real. Three other films were made to coincide with this Paranormal Sequels: 8213: Gacy House (Paranormal creature 2), Anneliese: The Exorcist Cassettes (Paranormal creature 3), And 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck (Paranormal creature 4). None of them managed to come anywhere close to the success of the series they were trying to emulate.
The stars have reunited for a podcast.
Featherston and Sloat recently started a podcast called Paranormal Activity: True Stories of Possession that “investigate[es] Real-life stories of demonic possession, tracing the phenomenon from its earliest known reports to its modern headlines” and featuring “recognized experts in witchcraft, shamanism, exorcism, and parapsychology.” You can listen on Audible.
Discover more about horror films:
manual
A version of this story appeared in 2015; it has been updated for 2024.
