Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I love inventing interesting people and then pushing them to their absolute limits - and usually those absolute limits involve homicidal faeries, werewolves, or some other paranormal menace.
The most pressure I felt was for the first 'Paranormal Activity,' because when it was released, whether it was going to be a hit or not, I knew it was going to be a life-altering event for me.
I've always been interested in the paranormal, but 'Gray Matter' is a more subtle, mature expression of that - looking at the powers of the brain and more delicate evidence of the extraordinary.
I'm just considering myself extremely lucky. All I wanted is to have 'Paranormal Activity' be released and become successful. And everything that's happened since then is just an enormous bonus.
I've had some very close encounters with the other side. They chose me to do this - I was doing this all before a TV show. They chose me to communicate with them; they chose my path as a paranormal.
I don't spend a lot of time thinking about scary demons, but I think that there are things in this world that are unexplainable that are mystical or paranormal. The possibility is there, definitely.
Horror isn't only about ghosts or monsters. For example, paranormal romance seems the antithesis of horror. Once you have a sexy, fun vampire who is sweet, and you have a happy ending, it's not horror.
The reason you can take the leap of faith with Stephen King, when it comes to the paranormal, or the things that happen in the world that he creates, is because the characters that he writes are accessible.
I love the ultimate escapism of paranormal and fantasy - all of the otherworldly creatures, magic, and possibilities that transport both reader and writer away from reality for a while - it's such delicious fun!
The paranormal bad boy is usually a fiercely loyal partner for the heroine. Once his sights are set on her, he doesn't notice other women, and he's utterly unconcerned with what anyone else thinks of his choice.
There have been movies like 'Paranormal Activity' or 'Blair Witch Project' in Hollywood that showed you could do movies with little or no money. It doesn't prevent them from creating larger than life spectacles as well.
'Paranormal 1' scared me because I didn't know if it was real or what. 'Blair Witch' was kind of scary for the same reason. It takes the voyeur element away and makes you think, 'Oh crap, this could really happen to me.'
I'm terrified of the supernatural things, which is why I'm very grateful that I don't see things like that. Because if I did see things of the paranormal persuasion, I don't think I'd be able to continue making scary movies.
I was first published as a paranormal author back in the early 1990s. I was one of the founders of that original wave of paranormal and am the leader of the new wave of paranormal that started at the beginning of this century.
I liked stuff like 'Halloween,' but I wasn't a horror fanatic until I was in my 30s and then made 'Paranormal Activity.' Now, having a company, I can't imagine doing anything else. But it took me a while to find my love for it.
One of my favorite ways to write paranormal, as in the 'Wake' trilogy, is to write very normal characters with just a hint of something other-worldly. Like somewhere, maybe, someone really can get sucked into other people's dreams.
Perhaps some of the appeal of the dangerous-but-yummy paranormal anti-hero lies in his scorn for societal expectations. Yes, women have come a long way, but there are still some cultural stigmas more associated with women than men.
So, I was sitting there and I watched 'Paranormal Activity' and I was like, 'Boy, white people do dumb stuff in movies.' So I was like, 'Why don't they just leave the house... What if paranormal activity happened to a black couple?'
My mother fed my love of demons, science fiction, and paranormal. She was a devout horror movie fan who kept me up until the wee hours to watch 'Outer Limits,' 'Night Gallery,' 'Twilight Zone,' and 'Star Trek.' We lived to watch those reruns.
I've written about superheroes. I've written about talking ferrets and math geniuses being chased by madmen. I've written about spies and demon-hunting soccer moms. I've created an entire world that centers around a paranormal judicial system.
Even when I was making the first 'Paranormal Activity,' I didn't tell anyone I was making it, not my friends or neighbors or co-workers. I just kind of found that there was nothing to gain by announcing to the world that you're doing something.
I love 'Paranormal Activity' and 'The Exorcist.' 'The Shining' is a great one too, but there's not a lot that scares me. Maybe it's because I know the other side of it, and I know how movies are made, but it takes a lot for me to get freaked out.
I taunt and provoke, but you have to understand that I do that for a reason. I want to elicit a response. Remember that my mission is to capture on film and digital recording devices evidence of the paranormal. Many times, I can't do that by being nice.
I've been a huge fan of all things paranormal my whole life. For me, it was always a question of when, not if, I was going to write a paranormal series. I dipped my toe in the genre by incorporating a mystical curse into the 'MacCarrick Brothers Trilogy.'
The best part of my job is being able to travel to places to investigate powerful stories, many of which contains unsolved mysteries and deaths. To me as a documentarian and paranormal investigator, this puts the adventure in my life and meaning to my job.
'Paranormal Activity' was the first of our independently made/studio-released films. It was also the ultimate low-budget high-concept movie, which is what we are always looking for. 'Paranormal Activity' was the genesis of our model, of which I am so proud.
If you chose to live in a home that is living on intersecting laylines, and you're living on an Indian burial ground and having paranormal experiences that are bothersome, you're not going to get rid of them. They've taken ownership of that home and that area.
Even if you look at the 'Paranormal Activity' movies, at the end of the movie things get really crazy and nutty, but they all start in a very mundane situation that people can relate to, and that's also to some degree what we tried to do in 'Chernobyl Diaries.'
I was that weird kid that checked out all of the non-fiction paranormal studies books from the library. I've always been fascinated by the supernatural, particularly movies and TV shows that manage to blend humor with the horror - 'Supernatural', 'Buffy', 'Angel.'
I wasn't cast to play the part of a paranormal investigator, like maybe some other shows out there. I believe it, and it's my passion, and this is what I'm here to do in this life. I love it. It was just meant to be for me. It's what I'm doing. This was my purpose.
People ask me, 'Why angels? Why paranormal? Why teens?' In the beginning, I'm not sure I knew I was starting down any of those twisted paths - paths that now seem so familiar to me that they are downright comforting. In the beginning, I was just writing about love.
The appeal of the paranormal bad boy - or James Bond super-spy, as one example of male escapism - can sometimes make everyday problems seem less dire. Thus, a few hours spent immersed in the world of the wicked yet alluring hero is the equivalent of a mini-vacation.
I think paranormal experiences are very personal, again, if they are that. Yes, sometimes I've felt that some things I would personally believe enough for me to take action on it... like, you know, I felt something happen in a hotel once that made me never stay there again.
I love being scared, and I always have done. When I was younger, I was always reading books about the paranormal, UFOs, and crop circles. I liked the idea of people seeing faces in walls and twins that could communicate with each other telepathically. I really believed it, too!
You have to be extremely careful because not only do you not know what you're going to be coming up against when dealing with the paranormal realm, but you also don't know what you're going to be dealing with as far as people claiming to have paranormal activity when it really isn't.
I'll watch something like 'Paranormal Activity,' 'The Shining,' or 'Rosemary's Baby,' and I love them, but then I watch 'The People Under the Stairs' or 'Candyman,' and they freak me out. It's weird because I don't where the line is. I don't know what that means. I don't know what I should watch and what I shouldn't.
I absolutely adore writing books with paranormal elements - and I love creating the often-complex worlds and/or plots that go along with those stories - but at the heart of all of that ,you have the characters, and when you get down to the core of it, it's spending the time with the characters that is what I truly love.
I was lucky enough to have made a tonne of mistakes and be kind of frustrated. I was working in the movies for 15 years before I did 'Paranormal Activity,' so I was lucky enough to have that experience. So instead of trying to make, like, 'Godzilla' after 'Paranormal Activity,' I said, 'Let's keep making inexpensive movies.'
On 'Paranormal Activity,' it worked to my advantage not to have much of a crew, but on a bigger movie, where you have to work with a larger group of people who basically become your second family for a few months, it can be a great experience. Even though all of my projects are small scale compared to most Hollywood productions.
'Rosemary's Baby' is still one of my favorite movies of all time. The idea of her being impregnated with the devil is just so frightening. I'm actually going to work on a movie in February, called 'Mercy,' from Jason Blum, who produced the 'Paranormal Activity' movies, and there is a similar theme to 'Rosemary's Baby' in the movie.
I was thinking about vampires and, specifically, about what makes vampires a romantic trope: about what people like about not just vampires but supernaturally long-lived creatures in general, which is a thing that shows up in probably fifty to sixty percent of paranormal romances... And then, for some reason, I decided to reverse it.
'Paranormal Activity' had fifty versions because it was $250 to reshoot. We'd screen it, see one thing wrong, shoot for an hour, fix it, and then screen it again. You don't have to be disciplined about it. On a regular movie, you have to screen it and think of every problem, reshoot for three days and solve every problem, and then you're done.
One of the reasons Batman works as a character is that it's not beyond possibility that he could exist - you could become Batman if you had a billion dollars at your disposal. There's nothing paranormal or superhuman or supernatural about that character. And I think his villains work the same way. You could be one of his villains just as easily.