Right now in
the Finley house we have some Paranormal stuff going, but it's
not 'activity', no sir. This Paranormal stuff is an
'Entity' is what it is. We know when you throw a high
hanging fastball to Barry Bonds that he's going to swing at it
and probably hit a home run. Thus The Asylum mockbusting
Paranormal Activity would be their version of a high hanging
fastball since that movie was dirt cheap already, The Asylum
has dirt cheap movies all up in their catalogue, and we're
pretty sure their version, 'Paranormal Entity', will be even
dirtier and cheaper. They're going to swing at
this fast ball, this we know, but will they hit a home
run? It's never happened before, but hope springs
eternal.
Sometime ago Mr. Finley died in a car accident and Mrs. Finley
(Fia Perrera) was sad. So she would write letters to her
dead husband, and then she would speak to him as if he were
alive because it helped ease her pain. Damn if Mr.
Finley, or some facsimile thereof, doesn't start speaking
back. Now we know that dead people shouldn't be
communicating with the living, and we have to question if this
really is Mr. Finley, because if it is then he hated his wife
and had really nasty thoughts about his adult daughter
Samantha (Erin Marie Hogan). Now a man who has nasty
thoughts about his daughter is a really bad man, no doubt, but
Samantha does lounge around the house, half dressed, like a
sexy minx, ALL THE TIME! So… you know… we don't condone
this ghosts awful thoughts, but we do kind of understand it.
Well, one thing we've learned by watching recent movies is
that if a ghost is in your house causing a ruckus then it's
time for somebody to obnoxiously videotape
everything. In this movie that somebody is first
son Thomas (Shane Van Dyke) who
has cameras
all around the house, including in his mom's and his sister's
bedroom, not to mention the hand held that he obnoxiously
carries everywhere and he's going to get to the bottom of
this. Mostly by getting various shots of his sexy
sister. Come on Samantha, I know you're at home and all,
but cover up a little.
So the cameras are set up, night vision is strong and Thomas
has his sister's and his mom's rooms under surveillance.
Weird, we know, but Thomas has to get to the bottom of this
nonsense. Eventually the strangeness kicks in. The
ghost hates Samantha's cross, it likes to make mom scribble
stuff, it likes to look at Samantha in her underwear. It
like likes grope Samantha. It likes to control Samantha
and make her walk around in her underwear. It likes to
scare Samantha while she's taking a bath. We even saw
where this thing was walking on the ceiling. Outside of
the Lionel Richie reference, what do you think that ghost was
doing on the ceiling? I'm guessing it was looking down
Samantha's shirt because there is a definite theme going on
here.
Ghostly apparition established… now what? Since this
movie started out by letting us know that everybody is pretty
much dead, not much is left except to watch Timothy yell out
'Jesus Christ!' over and over again, listen to Samantha shriek
every five minutes and wait for the next shot of Samantha
lounging around next to nothing. Outstanding.
Here's what this mockbuster, 'Paranormal Entity' has over the
majority of mockbusters that The Asylum has been putting out
over the years, and this would be that the source material is
already pretty lame to begin with. No, 'Paranormal
Entity' isn't as good as 'Paranormal Activity' as it wasn't
nearly as inventive and moved five times slower, but at
least it's not as far removed from its material as say
'Almighty Thor'… arguably the worst Asylum movie ever… was
removed from Marvel's actual 'Thor' blockbuster. Shane
Van Dyke directs in addition to being one of the four main
characters, I know we only talked about three but the
paranormal investigator that showed up near the end was
completely worthless. Clearly he paid attention to the
first 'Paranormal Activity' and while this movie didn't have a
lot of scares for me personally, I could see where somebody
might have jumped a time or two at some of the sight gags my
man was able to pull off. Shane also fixed a blatant
oversight in the first movie, this being that the extremely
healthy Katie Featherstone never got all nekkid and
stuff. It was an outrage. Not that we approve this
type of exploitation here at the FCU. But while actress
Erin Marie Hogan showed us some skin and was fun to look at,
she was playing the sister of the dude that was holding the
camera which did move things into some pervy territory.
The acting was a little erratic, from Fia Perrara's semi
comatose mother to Mr. Van Dyke's and Ms. Morgan's wildly
hysterical, often hilarious crazy trip out sessions.
Naturally most of the movie makes little sense, especially our
characters main reactions to the horror they were
experiencing. I know if I get groped by a ghost while
trying sleep, which would be even more disturbing since I'm a
dude, I wouldn't be going back to sleep. Ever.
Samantha had no such issues. Missouri senator Todd
Akin just texted to let me know it wasn't a legitimate grope,
that why she had no real issues with it. And why where
they so desperate to get this one wayward paranormal
investigator at the house? I mean it's not like it's a
real job and there had to be more than one of these quacks in
town. Guess what? I've declared myself a
paranormal investigator now. Invite me to your house and
I'll tell you that there's evil here and there's not a damn
thing you can do about it and charge you fifty bucks.
How hard was that?
Even though it seems like it should be easy, it does take some
skill to effectively pull off a found footage movie, which
'Paranormal Entity' was kind of able to do in a way, just as
The Asylum's own 'Alien Origin' and the putrid 'The Amityville
Haunting' weren't even close to pulling off. A little
boring, a little slow, slightly sleazy, but not the worst
found footage movie we've seen.
