PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: Watch Katie and Micah's Original Improvised Auditions
It's hard to believe it's been nearly ten years since the original Paranormal Activity made its debut on the festival circuit (it premiered in 2007, but didn't get a full theatrical release until 2009). I remember seeing the movie for the first time and being incredibly unsettled by it. I walked out of the theater into a creepy, foggy Los Angeles night, and kept all of the lights on in my apartment for the rest of the night before I ultimately fell into a restless sleep. I had read about how Steven Spielberg apparently thought his copy of the movie was haunted, and how he brought it back to his studio in a garbage bag because he didn't want it anywhere near his house.
I'm not sure how much of that Spielberg story is true and how much of it was crafted by a marketing team somewhere in order to add to the mystique of the movie, but after seeing the film, I could totally believe that was a genuine reaction.
Now, director Oren Peli (who has only directed one other movie) has released footage from the auditions of stars Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, who certainly had no idea that the $15,000 movie they were about to make was on its way to becoming a full-fledged horror movie phenomenon that would spawn multiple sequels and a complex web of mythology all its own. These are unique auditions because they're completely improvised (as was most of the movie itself), and it's cool to look back on this as an artifact of this mega-franchise in its earliest stages.
Via: /Film