No one could accuse The Paranormal Incident of being overly original. Not only does the title (weakly) riff on a very popular current franchise, but the plot and structure are almost identical to both Episode 50 and Grave Encounters. Given that neither of those films were exactly earth shatteringly great, it’s therefore depressing to note that this is the worst of the three, and possibly second only to the notorious The Tapes in terms of dismal found footage movies.

As with the two fore-mentioned films, The Paranormal Incident sees a group of would-be documentary makers spending a couple of nights in an abandoned asylum, hoping to find evidence to prove (or disprove) that the building is haunted. Like those films, the story is mostly told through the ‘recovered’ video recordings, and like those two films, the crew of this foolhardy endeavour are the most unlikely bunch of ghost hunters you could imagine. In this case, the filmmakers are students doing this as part of their course, so it’s possible that they would have some asshole, aggressive jock and his bimbo girlfriend along for the ride… but still not very likely. Then again, these are the sort of people who will continue to pull pranks on each other even after finding themselves locked in the building and encountering ‘terrifying’ supernatural entities, so who knows?

The story is framed with a sole survivor being questioned by a woman as he tries to prove he wasn’t responsible for the deaths. Given that this consists of the pair watching the tapes that seem to make this very clear, you have to question the veracity of the police investigation, though all becomes clear – sort of – in a twist ending that makes very little sense.

The film follows all the rules set down for this sort of thing – i.e. nothing happening apart from a lot of screaming while being shot mostly in night vision. In that sense at least, it’s an accurate recreation of ‘genuine’ ghost hunt TV shows like Most Haunted. But the film doesn’t even have the courage of its own convictions, and fudges several scenes at the end to show deaths in colour where there wouldn’t actually be any cameras (other than the suspiciously high-tech and working security cameras that this old, crumbling, abandoned building is full of) – unless the film is suggesting that the ghosts are also in on this whole documentary lark and are holding cameras themselves. Or, as the ending hints, that there is more to the story than meets the eye – which might be acceptable if we were told what that was, rather than having the film fizzle out in a flurry of bad acting and half-formed ideas.

The thing that makes The Paranormal Incident worse – and paradoxically more amusing – than both Episode 50 and Grave Encounters is the truly shocking acting. In particular, Oliver Rayon as survivor John chews the scenery with such vigour that you have to admire the effort he is making, even if it’s all in vain. The rest of the cast, who I imagine were hired more for looks than ability, deliver lines with such a lack of conviction and emotion that you imagine a career working with James Ngyuen is on the cards for them.

In the end, this is a sluggish, hackneyed story that has been done better in films that are not very good to begin with, and not even the addition of some gratuitous boobs early on or Rayon’s laugh-riot delivery at the end is enough to save it. As I’ve commented before, there’s no reason why the found-footage genre can’t be an effective way of telling a horror story, but lazy, clumsy efforts like this will only help enforce audience suspicions of such projects.

DAVID FLINT

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