3. It's Disposable
When today's film-goers are looking wistfully back at the "good old days" of cinema when they were young, as they sit down to watch a remake of Back To The Future, or something equally as ghastly, they won't remember Paranormal Activity as anything other than a temporary fad that popped up and outstayed its welcome when the century was still young. That is not simply because the films are poor - I would in fact argue that the first one was a valuable and entertaining experience - it is because of the nature of the beast. Regardless of how the sequels have tried to established a mythology to the films to entice longevity, or to give the scares some further weight than the immediate impact scare on which the franchise was initially built, Paranormal Activity simply doesn't have any slow-burning chills, and it isn't the sort of horror that lasts far beyond the immediate experience of watching it. The most successful horrors - such as The Shining, though that comparison is rather self-serving, or Event Horizon on a fairer level - that build in psychological images, and well-conceived techniques to make sure the scares last well beyond the cinema, because after all you take the best horrors to bed with you. They whisper from the dark places in your bedroom, and spring back up at illogical times - and that is precisely why they are memorable. Paranormal Activity on the other hand is all about that instant terror of being jumped out at, as I said previously - which feeds not off the mind's ability to perpetually scare itself with the right ammunition, but on the ridiculousness of jumping out of your skin - a sensation that is more often replaced by self-mocking mirth, as opposed to real icey fear. It is that sensation that dictates all of the "false-start" scares that appear in horror movies, that bait the audience into expecting a jump, only to switch to a non-sinister explanation, and though effective, that is not a recipe for enduring horror.