Saturday, April 26, 2025
Blog Page 1915

In the closet

Chris Graham
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In the closet

It should go without saying that nothing looks worse than effort, and that to appear scrupulously attired bespeaks an earnestness in preparation even more tiresome to behold than to deploy. Not only this, but the expectations thus created are needlessly high, waving the fastidious flag for all to see and inevitably despair. Already we are too tired to finish this paragraph without assistance, fittingly, from Oscar Wilde: ‘To have done it was nothing, but to make people think one had done it was a triumph.’

The truth in these observations is told by the great many who tack too far in the opposite direction, trying to remain calm but often failing even to remain casual, slipping instead into carelessness. At the extreme one finds the curious case of the intentionally careless, an utterly bemusing state, which makes no sense when written and even less when put into sartorial effect.

When in doubt, defer to someone with a keener eye than thee, who is signally concerned with the features of attractive male dress, having personal experience of both its features and its fit. To wit, the best shopping assistance comes from the gay male associate, and if this is not provided by the shop you should feel free to bring your own, a practice known in some parts as BYOG. A passable alternative is the attractive female associate, but help from any other quarter is easily more trouble than its worth.

When it comes time to compose an outfit from your closet – now appropriately curated – bear in mind that most sartorial offences come in threes: matching belt, shoes and bag; or shirt, tie, and pocket square. Try to think in terms of exceptions or surprises, such as, ‘Surprise! Pink and orange work better than you think’, while maintaining a sense of proportion by confining your exclamations to one part of your outfit, perhaps the furnishings for an otherwise simple suit. The main thing is not to banish all thought of coordination, but to treat this as an afterthought, leaving you that much closer to the sartorial vanguard, almost by accident.

Review: Adolescent Funk – DÂM-FUNK

Miuzi White
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Review: Adolescent Funk – DÂM-FUNK

Dâm-Funk, supreme ‘Ambassador of Boogie Funk’, is the discerning playa’s producer of choice. The guy is passionate; he ill – he cherishes vintage gear, and unlike Kanye West, knows how to use it. ‘Cos Dâm’s been in the game a long time. He released a mammoth five LPs in 2009, which were abridged and released as Toeachizown. It was hot: a mini-trend of Lakers throwback jerseys in our city of Oxford was directly attributed to this release. Electro-boogie was back and it was bubbling.

So Peanut Butter Wolf, boss of Stones Throw Records, has seen it fit to compile a selection of Dâm’s unreleased work from the late eighties and early nineties. We don’t got vinyl crackle, we got tape hiss – and lots of it. ‘I Like Your Big Azz (Girl)’ is a killer, reflecting the most noble of predilections – that for ass. ‘It’s My Life!’ evokes the moment of the night when you’ve parked the ragtop, you’re blunted but starting to get stimmy, you greet the bouncer and miss out the queue.

The music on the disc may be juvenilia, but it’s still indispensable for all of Oxford’s heads and wannabe-heads. You’ll either get the sound or you won’t. If you want to listen to dubstep or music by white people, you can; but in the back of your mind you will be tortured by the question: ‘How You Gon Fuck Around And Choose A Busta (Over A Real Gangsta)?’.

Review: North – Darkstar

Joseph Lloyd
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Review: North – Darkstar

Even in the ever-amorphous genre formerly known as dubstep, Darkstar didn’t quite fit in. The duo of Aiden Whalley and James Young released a handful of singles over the last few years, each release inching further away from the 2-step beats they started with. On North, they forsake beats entirely, transforming themselves into a downbeat synth-pop band. Think Burial’s Untrue meets The Tin Drum: evocations of abandoned factories, darkened underpasses and lakes at night.
The album’s lead single ‘Gold’ is a cover of a Human League b-side, though Darkstar treat it more like an early-eighties Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark track. Cautious, disinterested vocals float above mournful synths and skittering drums, doing away with the original’s juddering flourishes and jerky rhythm. Singer and new member James Buttery often sounds as if he’s struggling to emote against the melancholy electronics. In ‘Two Chords’, his voice is half-there, drifting above its backdrop but manipulated by it; by final track and album highlight, ‘When It’s Gone’, he has become computerized, moving down the path towards Kraftwerk’s robotics. ‘Ostkruez’ echoes Bowie’s Low instrumentals, whilst the title track wouldn’t be out of place on a Junior Boys album. Only the hypnotic ‘Aidy’s Girl Is A Computer’ betrays Darkstar’s origins – released last year as a single, it’s both danceable and unsettling, placing clipped vocal samples over a looped xylophone to create a skeletal cousin of the band’s earlier dubstep works.

With North, Darkstar successfully reinvent themselves as a synth-pop band without falling into the trap of revivalism. It’s a bold artistic move, and one that expands dubstep’s crossover potential further than ever before.

Irish Stew (in the name of the law)

Holly Graham
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Irish Stew (in the name of the law)

Winter is great for so many reasons. It gets overlooked next to its more glamorous
counterparts (I’m thinking of Summer and Spring, but even Autumn gets a look-in with its
jazzy coloured leaves) but in terms of cooking, it is perhaps the best of them all. And the most
glorious of all winter foods is without a doubt the stew.

Stews come in all sorts of delicious flavours and forms, and (perhaps most importantly) they
make mashed potato acceptable, and even appropriate. I think its good to remember that the
idea of ‘warming food’ shouldn’t be limited to meat, especially if you’re on a budget. So below,
I have included my top three stews, veggie, meaty and a bit of both.

Ladies, I hope the prospect of eating these makes you happier than the prospect of the next
three months of getting to wear black tights. Gents, make one of these for your gal and she
won’t be wearing them for long.

Chick pea and tomato stew

This started as a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi – but I have adapted it beyond recognition to
suit my budget, and hopefully yours.
Serves 4, approx. 80p per serving

1 onion, sliced

1 carrot, sliced

3 sticks of celery, sliced

olive oil

1 tbsp tomato puree

1 tin tomatoes (plum if possible)

2 tsp dried oregano

2 tsp dried parsley

1 tsp dried thyme

(or substitute all three of these for 3 tsp ‘mixed herbs’ – definitely inferior, but cheaper)

2 tsp sugar

1 litre stock

half a loaf of (unsliced) bread, or 4/5 slices of bread

400g can chick peas

Add 2 tbsp oil to a pan with a little bit of butter if you have it. Add onion and sauté for about 5
minutes. Add carrot and celery and cook for another 5 minutes. Add tomato puree, cook for 2
minutes to get rid of the acidity. Add the tomatoes, herbs, stock and the caster sugar (tinned
tomatoes have an acidity to them, which this balances out – but it isn’t live-or-die if you don’t
have it). Simmer for 20-30 mins – add more water if it starts to look dry.
While it is simmering, take the bread you have (ideally the unsliced white loaf variety, about
60p from the bakery section of the supermarket) and break it into small pieces. Drizzle with
olive oil and salt and bake for 10-15 mins in a 180 oven (Gas, 4). Check it halfway to ensure it
doesn’t burn. Once the tomato juice is looking ready, open the chickpeas, drain and place in a
bowl. Then half mash them with a fork (so you have a few whole, a few mushed). Add them to
the liquid and cook for another five minutes. Then add the toasted bread, mix around so the
bread soaks up most of the liquid, and serve. Great with a bit of pesto on top.

Chicken stroganoff

Serves four, approx £2.20 per (sizeable) portion

Arguably this isn’t always cooked like a stew, but I cook mine in the oven to maximise the
potential of the awesome chicken thigh (a student meat-eater’s dream, about £2.50 for four
even if you go free-range.) The smoky, pepperiness of this is counteracted by the lemony
crème-fraichiness and its delicious. Great with mash – if it looks oily when you take it out the
oven give it a good mix before serving.

Olive oil

1 red onion, sliced

1 clove of garlic

250g mushrooms

2 pack of chicken thighs (so about 8 thighs)

crème fraiche

1 lemon

2 tbsp paprika

parsley (fresh if possible)

salt and pepper

potatoes (baking, mashing, it doesn’t make much difference)

Heat a large frying pan and add some oil. Fry the sliced onions and garlic until soft – remove
from the pan and place in a bowl. Slice the chicken thighs (remove skins if they have them)
and season with salt pepper and plenty of paprika. Add a little more oil to the pan and heat.
Add the mushrooms until they start to brown and then add the meat. Once the meat has
browned, remove the parsley leaves from the stalks and add the stalks to the meat. Re-add
the onion and garlic and mix. Add the juice and zest of 1 lemon and 2 tbsp crème fraiche and
place the mixture into an ovenproof dish. Place in the oven for 15-20 mins.

In the meantime, boil your potatoes until soft. Drain, add butter and 1 tbsp crème fraiche and
mash until your elbow aches. Serve the stroganoff on the mash with the (chopped) parsley
leaves as decoration. Yum!

(If you’re a veggie – or it’s the end of term and you’re especially poor – just take out the
chicken and double the mushrooms for mushroom stroganoff, almost as good).

Sausage stew

Serves 3, about £1.60 per portion (for good sausages)

olive oil

6 sausages (as good as you can afford)

1 onion, roughly chopped

2 sticks of celery, roughly chopped

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp paprika

2 tbsp plain flour

A splash of white wine or 1tbsp white wine vinegar

750ml chicken stock

400g tin of plum tomatoes

salt and pepper

Heat some olive oil in the pan, and add your sausages. Cook them until brown on all sides
and then remove them from the pan and put them in a bowl. Remove most of the fat from the
pan (leaving a thin layer on the bottom). Add the onion and celery, fry for 10 minutes – until
they are getting soft – and then add garlic, thyme, paprika and flour. Pour over some white
wine (vinegar will do if you don’t want to waste precious booze) and let it evaporate. Re-add
the sausage, along with stock and the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and cook for
fifteen minutes or until it’s thick and juicy and meaty and deliciously ready to go. Serve with
rice, mash or – my favourite – a big hunk of bread.

The American Tongue: Resurrected

Alyssa Grossbard
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The American Tongue: Resurrected

I’m usually not the type of person to walk into a room and hover on the sidelines of a mingling crowd, prepared to wait to be spoken to before engaging in conversation. Usually it’s the opposite; I feel more at ease after I go up to a friendly-looking face and strike up a discussion. Doing this makes social events where I don’t know any of the other attendees much more enjoyable. But ever since arriving at Oxford last year, I’ve felt the urge to rein in that habit a little, primarily for one reason – the minute I open my mouth, I’m going to be marked as an “other”. My lack of a British accent will betray me, as I introduce myself in my native American tongue.

Most students at Oxford would be quick to say that they don’t view international students any differently than their compatriots, that it’s ridiculous to feel like I’ve got something to hide. And in theory, they’re right – most of my best friends at Oxford are other British undergraduates, and aside from the occasional friendly snicker or two when I pronounce something the American way, we’ve managed to get past most of our linguistic differences after more than a year together. However, most new people I meet, no matter how subconsciously they do it, instantly project a generic image of Americanism onto me before I’ve said anything about myself other than my name.

Inevitably, on discovering that I hail from across the pond, I will be asked several questions in rapid succession, which although they may vary slightly in wording, never fail to stray from a few key points. First, I will be asked where in America I am from; I will then say Connecticut, a town about an hour from Manhattan, where I was born.

Subsequently, I will either be asked where Connecticut is (if the person I’m speaking to did not hear the second bit – everyone seems to know where New York City is) or, my new acquaintance will begin to gush about someone they know who lives in New York and ask whether I know them. The answer is, for future reference, most likely no; the same goes for those who say they have friends or family in Arizona or North Carolina; chances are, I have not been to that town or met anyone from that school, unless the town is in New England or the school is in New York.

Then, of course, I will be asked where I’m studying abroad from, since the vast majority of Americans engaged in undergraduate study are of course students at universities in the United States taking a year abroad. I’m still surprised at the disbelief which sometimes flashes across someone’s face when I explain that I am a “real” student, reading for a degree in history at an “actual” college (and I’m not making exceptions for Americans here who are studying abroad, either – they’re often the most disbelieving of all!)

By this time, several words will have been exchanged, and my new acquaintance will invariably comment on the fact that my accent does not sound like a “typical American” accent. No, it does not; I am from a state where residents posses neither southern twangs nor nasal outer-borough screeches, no hint of Boston or the Rocky Mountains or California discernible in my voice. In my nation, a place Winston Churchill termed “this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic,” there are many accents, and many voices, and mine is distinct only in its failure to fulfil any stereotype.

But I’m perfectly content with the tone of my American tongue. In fact, though reflex may hint otherwise, I don’t really feel the need to hide anything. After all, once the initial onslaught of familiar questions is past, I’m treated just like everyone else – until the discussion turns to American politics, that is. And when that happens, I can’t guarantee anything.

I ain’t saying he’s a golddigger

Alex Dudok De Wit
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I ain’t saying he’s a golddigger

“Cash Rules Everything Around Me” – so goes the chorus of Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘C.R.E.A.M.’. In hip hop more than in any other genre, the accumulation of wealth is held up as a barometer of success. Hence bling, the hackneyed rags-to-riches rap, references to Cadillac and Rolex. So when the credit crunches, how do rappers react? Do they try to keep up appearances, or do they reverse the barometer and esteem poverty? Does their music change, and are their sales affected?

The 2009 Grammy Awards ceremony was an interesting parade of celebrity restraint and austerity – a rarity for an event that normally deals in glitz and prosperity. Lil Wayne, who only the previous year had been bragging about being “a young money millionaire”, turned up in a t-shirt and modest necklace that belied his claim; few rappers donned more than a sleek suit.

The ceremony testified to one of the most salient symptoms of hip hop’s economic malaise: a downturn in the bling trend. Gold ostentation hasn’t been so unpopular since Slick Rick and his peers first popularized it in the late eighties. And the impact of the recession on rappers’ images doesn’t stop there: 50 Cent’s recent dramatic weight loss, for example, is doubtless the outcome of economic (as well as nutritional) deficiency. As renowned hip hop stylist Tamara Connor puts it, “conspicuous consumption in the industry is gone”.

For rappers aren’t getting paid like they used to. In the fiscal year 2008-9, hip hop sales dropped by over 20% – more than any genre bar classical, country and Latin. Top rappers might once have made $80,000 from one track; now they’d be lucky to get half that. Factors such as the advent of file sharing are also to blame for these figures. But it’s obvious that hip hop, unlike cinemas and Starbucks, isn’t enjoying a perverse boom as a recession-era “comfort product”. Rappers’ entrepreneurial zeal – itself an offshoot of the “rap as business” mentality – has suffered in these circumstances: this year, Wyclef Jean lost his Malibu mansion, P Diddy his private jet, and Jay-Z both his nightclub and his hotel venture.

However, there is as yet little evidence of a widespread response to the crunch from hip hop music itself. Some artists are implicitly denying the climate of poverty – see for example Kanye West’s high-budget, self-aggrandizing video for ‘Power’. Others are explicitly resisting it – in their single ‘Kinda Like A Big Deal’, Virginia duo Clipse brag that “it’s a blessing to blow a hundred thousand dollars in a recession”. The notion that wealth in the recession era is all the more impressive can be termed the “recession-proof ideal”. Meanwhile, hip hop radio, and artists like Dizzee Rascal, continue to drift towards the mainstream. This could be seen as a calculated survival measure: in desperate times, artists and companies alike resort to safe money-spinners.
Yet it would be premature to ascribe this kind of commercialization to the credit crunch and leave it at that. We can’t discount the dynamics of the record industry, the whims of the underground hip hop scenes, and the abovementioned problem of file sharing. And it’s certainly too early to speak of a genre of “recession-era hip hop” – or “credit crunk” – as we do of, say, “literature of the Great Depression”.

But changes in hip hop culture entail changes in the music. It’s been a while since poverty was a fashionable topic in hip hop. In its early days, the genre concerned itself with Reagan’s tough fiscal policies, and the social cleavages caused by the crack epidemic; but from Clinton onwards, the economy was kind to the industry. Now we’re coming close to full circle: Young Jeezy’s prophetic 2008 album The Recession advocated a return to simplicity, and the hip hop world apparently agrees. The credit crunch could have led to the cultivation of the “recession-proof ideal” – of bling and ostentation as escapism – but evidence suggests that hip hop’s going the other way.

In due course, rappers will invert Notorious BIG’s maxim “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems”, and come to count the straitened economic climate as a blessing.

Hidden Horror

Cherwell Culture
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Hidden Horror

Audition (1999)

Director: Takashi Miike

Truly graphic and truly gruesome, but not in a ‘Cabin Fever’ kind of way It’s a slow build up, utterly devoid of blood, until the last gruesome show down. Audition concerns widower Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), who 7 years after his wife’s death, is still alone with his son. He auditions for, essentially, a wife. His favourite, obviously, turns out to be a nutter. Cue a creepy build up until you’re allowed to really hide behind your sofa.

Possession (1981)

Director: Andrzej Zuławski.

Another cult movie that is part drama, part horror, part thriller. A young woman leaves her family in suspicious circumstances. The husband, determined to find out the truth, starts following her. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But bizarre incidents indicate something more. Essentially, it unleashes the crazy and pretty soon they’re cutting themselves with electric knives, running through the streets covered in blood, disposing of bodies and generally being all freaky.

Cronos (1993)

Director: Gillermo del Toro

The best Mexican parasitic vampire film. An antiques dealer discovers a strange gilded beetle, which houses an immortal parasite which grants eternal life to its host. Obviously, there is a terrible price for this ‘gift’, which Gris is doomed to discover after the object anchors itself to his body. Creepiest scene? When a murdered Gris resurrects, to discover his mouth has been sewn up. Ew.

Let The Right One In

Archive
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Let The Right One In

This was a mistake. Sitting in All Soul’s College, an insistently blank stack of paper in front me, coupled with an insistent list of questions. Can music be immoral? Are the Americans the Romans of the modern world? What is the relationship between science and literature?

Rewind to this morning: I put on my gown but sub fusc wasn’t required. I arrived at All Soul’s; everyone is in gowns. And sub fusc. Maybe they feel that wearing sub fusc in exams helps the circulation of blood to the brain. But I’ve never taken an exam at Oxford. This was a mistake.

Let me be blunt: the ridiculous fact is I had never heard of The All Souls’ Exam. When I got a forwarded email titled ‘All Souls College Open Evening For Women’ with the text saying things like ‘We are concerned that relatively few women choose to sit the exam’, I thought, ‘It’s just an exam, what’s the big deal?’ I’m not English, so I didn’t grow up steeped in mystique about what lies behind the gates of All Souls’ College. And I’m not European, so my fees are something that makes me want to sell my love of learning to the highest bidder. So, in brief, I’m doing it for the money: I’m so tired of filling out damned funding applications, sitting a twelve hour exam seemed less of a hassle than trying to estimate my non-existent yearly income. Ultimately, my ignorance of what this exam actually is has led me, gowned, into the exam room.

The invigilator flaps in, in his scholar’s gown. He sat the exam a few years back. He is jovial. He struggles over reading the directions. A kindly administrator in a green suit helps him: ‘If there is a fire, leave your belongings’.

The only belongings we were instructed to bring were a BLACK NOT BLUE pen, a gown, and intellectual self-reflexivity. I have the pen and the gown. The invigilator leaves with the administrator. We are alone. We are the presumptuous ninety-odd sitters of the All Souls’ Fellowship Exam. I was not recommended to take this exam. I did not find out that one could be recommended until after the first paper. Maybe everyone sitting around me has been recommended.

There is a diverse cast of characters here. There are the recent undergraduates, who have a post at Prestigious Investment Bank in London waiting for them. They are sitting the exam in a final gesture of farewell to their academic selves. They wear navy, pinstriped suits, chat relaxedly and shake hands with one another. They were recommended by a college tutor to take the exam. They were flattered, already had their six-figure future lined up, but are sitting it for a story for their co-workers.

There is the herd of graduate students, varying in their levels of desperation. They wear thick-framed, intellectual but trying to be hip, glasses. They go around politely introducing themselves to people, inquiring about your coursework, your housing, your research. If they are studying humanities, they laugh about being self-funded and secretly hope for a miracle. If they are scientists, they are puffed up with false confidence that they do know as much about philosophy as the philosophy post-grads. But they secretly wonder if it reflects badly on them that they couldn’t get funding, even as scientists.

There are flocks of bashful girls who read English; they wear floral prints and trench coats. They all have familiar faces but you can never remember their names.

Then there are the non-native English speakers, quietly wondering if anyone from not England/America/Australia, has won this thing. They don’t really want to know.

Still staring at the list of questions: Does it matter if national identities wither away? Can charity be selfish? What separates literature from other forms of writing? I get up to pour myself some water. They have bottles of still and sparkling water, with the All Souls’ crest imprinted on them Will sparkling water help the circulation of blood to my brain? I sit down. I catch the glance of another sitter. She looks away. Someone else is staring out the window, head in hands. Some people have taken off their gowns and rolled up their white sleeves. They are writing furiously. I pick up my pen.

At ten ’til the hour, the invigilator waltzes in again. I supposed you can afford to waltz when you are guaranteed about twenty-thousand pounds for seven years for doing…I’m not sure what. If you get this thing, what happens? You move into All Soul’s College. You dine in Hall with all the other Fellows. Maybe you feel like an imposter. You wear your black gown and have a Scout empty your waste bin until you are thirty. You revel in your brilliance only briefly, and spend the rest of the time reveling in everyone else’s brilliance. But you get money, for seven years. You are living the academic dream, being paid to think. And to just be.

It doesn’t really matter what the All Souls’ Fellowship is exactly. It’s the All Souls’ Fellowship. If you find yourself sitting in All Souls’ College wondering about the morality of music, you are one of the few people in the world who has an undergraduate degree and has matriculated at Oxford. You might be smart. It would be a good idea to be. But you might not. You might have decided to take this thing on a whim, on a bet, on a dare. They told everyone that when you take the exam you should assume you could never get it. Assume it is Everest and that you are not Sir Edmund Hilary. One or two of the people assuming that will be surprised and will get the Prize. But the rest of us will have assumed rightly.

Afterwards, your friends will be flabbergasted that you even sat the thing in the first place. They’ll ask you lots of questions. You’ll debate what to say. It was horrible? It was the hardest thing ever? Or, perhaps, it was kind of fun? With no marks, jobs or future riding on this thing, you are asked to answer the question Can music be immoral with no strings attached. You take out your intellectual self-reflexivity and spend six hours thinking about music. Morality. Wagner comes to mind but you think Wagner is boring. So instead, you write about that neo-fascist band your ex showed you, or that radio programme about fist fights breaking out in classical music concerts or that speaker at your college who talked about the music of plastic surgery. You write something down. You submit. You take off your gown. You secretly think it was okay but you say it was hard and exhausting so no one expects too much from you. Afterwards, you walk through the All Souls quad and hear someone say, ‘I wrote about how Wagner is banned in Israel, you know, because of the Holocaust’. Maybe I should have written about Wagner. Or maybe intellectual self-reflexivity comes in many forms. The Fellows of All Souls will have to decide.

Should you go see Saw?

Dale Viva-Lee
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Should you go see Saw?

Just in time for Halloween, Saw 3D is hitting our screens. For supposedly (hopefully) the last instalment of the Saw saga, director Kevin Kreutert brings us what promises to be a goretastic Halloween treat.

If you were left frustrated at the incomplete nature of the first six films, by popular public request the film’s production team spend the ninety minutes of running time of Saw 3D tying up any loose ends. The main story line for the film is set around an urban shopping area where a crowd of people gather around a storefront window to find two men, Ryan and Brad, tied to a worktable, each with a saw in front of them and their lover, Dina, suspended above. As she is being lowered onto another saw, each of the men must choose to either kill the other in order to save her, or allow her to die, resulting in their freedom. Meanwhile, survivors from Jigsaw’s previous traps gather to seek the support of self-help guru and fellow survivor Bobby Dagen.

And if the promise of a expertly shot ‘saw-off’ doesn’t appeal to you, perhaps the prospect of a cameo from a mediocre celebrity? Linkin Park fans the world over will be queuing up to see their main man, Chester Bennington, take up his minor role in the film (some might use the word ‘extra’). On interview, Chester confessed, “It was actually a little more difficult than I expected because it took a lot for me to figure out how to portray this guy and what exactly his motives were going to be throughout. I thought maybe I was overthinking it, and I met with this really great acting coach who helped me walk through and make sense of the ‘motivation’…..”
It will be interesting to see how 3D imaging works for Saw: whether it serves to exaggerate or lessen the thrill. Much of the $17 million budget (the film was the most expensive Saw film yet) went on special camera equipment and 3D compatible props. One of the film’s producers, Marcus Dunstan, commented, “[3D] adds a whole new layer of discipline and criteria to creating these moments. Before, we had a very flat surface to try to get a reaction from [the audience]. Now, we get to push out a bit and envelop the viewer’. He later added that another reason for going 3D was ‘so that you can, per se, see blood coming directly at you’. Brilliant.

Psychological Warfare

Ben Kirby And Evie Deavall
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Psychological Warfare

The Proposition

The technique of ‘found footage’ is far from a novelty in horror cinema. Long before The Blair Witch Project (1999), audiences were being terrified by Cannibal Holocaust (1980), a film so dedicated to its premise of being factual that the director was arrested on suspicion of having killed his actors. But that was thirty years ago, and audiences have since become far savvier about exactly what is real. With this in mind, it is impressive that with 2009’s Paranormal Activity, director Oren Peli managed at least to raise the possibility that what the audience was seeing might be genuine. However, with this hurried and repetitious sequel, the minds behind Paranormal Activity 2 seem to have done their utmost to dispel any lingering sense of terror.

The plot centres on the Rey family, whose step-mother, Kristie, is the sister of Katie from the original. It opens with the parents bringing their new baby, Hunter, back from the hospital, and it is at this point that things take a turn for the spooky. Yet from the very first night in the house – helpfully signposted as ‘Night 1’ – events take a predictable and increasingly boring turn. An indispensible weapon in the arsenal of any great horror film is the gradual build-up of tension, as well as strongly established location and characters, yet here, the cameras manage to establish the physical layout and nothing more. It is a bland location utterly lacking any discernable identity, a far cry from the iconic house of The Amityville Horror (1979). Worse still, the characters themselves lack any depth whatsoever, instead being reduced to stereotypes that fail to elicit any sympathy from the audience.

Even without depth or strong characterisation, it is still possible to make an effectively frightening horror film, but this possibility seems to have escaped director Tod Williams. The first half hour seems to gesture towards developing the characters and building tension, but it achieves neither, instead eliciting only boredom from the audience.

Yet even once the film gets going, things hardly improve; each scare is reduced to a loud noise intended to make the audience jump, a cheap and utterly superficial tactic. It also swiftly becomes dull – once you’ve seen a door slam several times, it quickly begins to lose its ominous significance. The gradual development of the spooky goings-on in the house is also achingly predictable, getting bigger and, inevitably, less effective as the film develops; they progress from the familiar creepiness of vague noises to a laughable repetition of the first film, with a woman being dragged around the house by an invisible force.

Much of the first film’s strength lay in its coherent execution of the ‘found footage’ technique, yet here, as Williams strains to maintain a sense of realism – who records their banal phone conversations and most intimate moments and arguments with a camcorder? – it becomes clear that Paranormal Activity 2 is a monotonous failure on almost every level. It is a witless, hurried and painfully predictable mess, and worth avoiding at all costs.

Ben Kirby

The Opposition

Ben is right. The technique of ‘found footage’ is far from original. It is, however, far from an exhausted genre. While CGI slowly overmasters virtual blood and guts, the simple hand-held camera approach refreshes the thriller film industry. More importantly, though, this style of ‘back to basics’ filmmaking can be far cleverer than any technology could ever be.

The film’s director, Tod Williams, is acutely aware of how to exploit an audience’s potential sensitivities: the cinematic equivalent of rocket-science. Paranormal Activity 2 does just this. The phenomena in the film take place largely at night, tapping into one’s most vulnerable state of being asleep.

The film is based on extensive research into paranormal phenomena and demonology, concluding that ‘demons’ are perceived as the most malevolent and violent entities. The actors themselves are not given a script, instead just the basic outline of the story – a process known as ‘retroscripting’. Their performances are, as a result, raw reactions to the scenes set up by the director: Williams had rightly observed that genuine fear is something that cannot be scripted.

In terms of the characters, they deliver: the audience is lulled into tentative comfort by Hunter’s warm baby gurgles and Kristie’s soft temperament. The audience’s heavy investment in the characters is abused night after night as the strange goings-on unnerve and terrorise them.

As Kirby astutely observes, Williams dedicates an hour of reel to atmospheric build up, creating an almost nauseating tension. The low and persistent buzzing of the camera is very quickly associated with impending, inescapable fear. The documentation of their experience through the use of ‘Night #1’, and so on, intensifies the unbearable anticipation of the inevitable: a count-down, if you will.
Even the harrowing ending is slow-paced, drawn out and overwrought: a comforting sign that Williams resisted the popular temptation of taking ‘gore’ and running with it. Paranormal Activity is clever, structured, meticulously timed and, without a lurking shadow of a doubt, bloody scary.

Evie Deavall

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