Spooky Popular
One thing I like about film reviews in the trades is they discuss commercial potential. Here's what the Hollywood Reporter had to say about Paranormal Activity:
....much of "Paranormal" is as exciting as the outtakes from a particularly dull episode of "Big Brother." Careful handling is a must for the picture to capitalize on its strength -- an incremental sense of dread that leads to some genuine jolts in the final half-hour. Those shocks should generate an avid cult following, but writer-director Oren Peli's housebound horror tale is unlikely to cast a massive boxoffice spell like the "Blair Witch" phenomenon
....much of "Paranormal" is as exciting as the outtakes from a particularly dull episode of "Big Brother." Careful handling is a must for the picture to capitalize on its strength -- an incremental sense of dread that leads to some genuine jolts in the final half-hour. Those shocks should generate an avid cult following, but writer-director Oren Peli's housebound horror tale is unlikely to cast a massive boxoffice spell like the "Blair Witch" phenomenon
That's exactly what has happened. It's on the way to making $100 million plus. Oh well, I guess there's no way to predict a phenomenon.
By the way, for me, Paranormal Activity, yes, Blair Witch, no.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:22 AM
3 Comments:
Can you let us know if there is some sort of acknowledgement at some point that this reviewer was completely wrong in a future edition of the Hollywood Reporter. It seems so rare that people are held accountable, or even admit prior errors that they noisily published in the past.
Of course, I have to give credit to the Pajama Guy team that annually reviews their previous year predictions, where mea culpas abound.
The Reporter has gone on to note the phenomenon of the movie, but I don't believe has acknowledged how wrong its review was. Pundits are rarely punished for inaccurate predictions, and certainly in the world of show biz, where no one knows anything, it's hard to be troubled by spectacularly bad guesses.
Well its not so much a review as a prediction and we like people to make predictions so I'm not sure coming down hard is the thing to do unless we want to get predictions like George Carlin's weather report (not the hippy-dippy weather guy, the other biy)
OK- It will rain on and off .....
for many years
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