LOS ANGELES (AP) — The no-budget ghost story “Paranormal Activity” arrives 10 years after “The Blair Witch Project,” and the two horror movies share more than a clever construct and shaky, handheld camerawork.

Like its predecessor, “Paranormal Activity” has been making waves through a viral marketing campaign that has been building positive buzz through early, sold-out college town screenings and Internet chatter. The film’s title has become a nightly fixture among Twitter’s trending topics, despite playing only midnight shows in 33 theaters when it opened last Friday.

This week it expands to 46 markets where it will play throughout the day and evening in more than 170 theaters. And, like “Blair Witch,” “Paranormal Activity” is bound to divide audiences who have absorbed the hype.

Best advice: See it early in its run – and late at night in a packed theater. Half the fun of the movie comes from the communal experience of sharing in something that feels like it hasn’t been market-tested within an inch of its life.

The irony is that Paramount Pictures did initially test the film with the idea of having writer-director Oren Peli re-shoot it with a bigger budget. But the movie, which video-game designer Peli shot two years ago for a reported $15,000, played so well in that one screening that the studio decided go a different route, trimming the length and punching up the ending.

“Paranormal Activity” opens with a title card, thanking the families of Micah Sloat and Katie Featherstone as well as the San Diego Police Department, an immediate signal that the “found footage” we’re about to see won’t have a happy outcome.

Micah (Micah Sloat) has bought a video camera to document the “weird (stuff)” that has been happening in the two-story San Diego home he shares with his girlfriend of three years, Katie (Katie Featherstone).

It turns out that freaky things have been happening to Katie since her family’s house burned down when she was eight. Since then, Katie has suffered through nightmares and felt the presence of a “shadowy figure” at the foot of her bed. The young couple consult a psychic (Michael Bayouth), who senses the bad mojo and refers them to a demonologist.

His other piece of advice: DO NOT buy a Ouija board. You don’t want to open the lines of communication with this thing. Micah, being an arrogant young dude and a bit of an idiot, dismisses the tip and refuses any outside help. “This is my girlfriend, my house and I’m gonna’ solve the problem!”

Micah’s solution is to set up his new camera on a tripod at the foot of the couple’s bed and document what happens while they sleep. The movie’s genius comes from its slow-building tension as it returns night after night to this fixed location, a time code running in the lower right corner of the screen. The bedroom door leading to the upstairs hallway is ajar … and then it’s not.

The entire film takes place at the couple’s cookie-cutter dwelling, its layout and furnishings indistinguishable from just about any other readymade home constructed in the past 20 years. Its ordinariness makes the eerie, nocturnal activities all the more terrifying, as does the anonymity of the actors adequately playing the leads.

The thinness of the premise is laid bare toward the end, but not enough to erase the horror of those silent, nighttime images seen through Micah’s bedroom camera. “Paranormal Activity” owns a raw, primal potency, proving again that, to the mind, suggestion has as much power as a sledgehammer to the skull.

“Paranormal Activity,” a Paramount Pictures release, is rated R for language. Running time: 84 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Look out now... zombie! (Taylor Jones / Post file photo)

by ALEXIS LARSEN

There are two schools of lumbering zombie camps out there: those who delight in zombies for the gore and destruction and those who enjoy their funnier, softer, crumbling side.

This list of our favorites draws influence from the campier, more light-hearted side of the spectrum. Regardless of which you go with, zombies work in a wide variety of formats — books, movies, music, video games, graphic novels and more. Here are 10 zombies we love from various genres. We’ve ranked each in speed, strength, hunger, ingenuity, determination and scariness on a 1 to 10 scale.
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Click here if you haven’t read part 1.

And now, more from the wonderful world of our undead friends. Amazing how many there really are…

Stubbs the Zombie

Genre: Video game

What? Stubbs, the undead 1950s-era traveling salesman who is the main character from the 2005 video game Rebel Without a Pulse.

Zombie speed: 6 — assuming you know how to handle him running.

Zombie strength: This ranges — as long as you can keep control, Stubbs will keep up.
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'The Final Destination' won the battle of horror sequels, beating out 'Halloween II'. (AP)

Movie fans have made fear their top destination at the weekend box office.

The horror tale “The Final Destination” debuted as the No. 1 movie with $28.3 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. The Warner Bros. sequel is the latest installment in the franchise about people stalked by death after a premonition saves them from their destined demise.

“Final Destination” took over the top spot from Quentin Tarantino and Brad Pitt’s World War II saga “Inglourious Basterds,” which slipped to second place with $20 million. The Weinstein Co. release raised its total to $73.8 million after 10 days in theaters.

Weinstein also had the No. 3 slot with the horror flick “Halloween II,” which opened with $17.4 million. The movie is Rob Zombie’s sequel to his update of the slasher franchise about crazed killer Michael Myers.
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Rachel Weisz and Adrien Brody try to work out who's conning whom in 'The Brothers Bloom'. (Courtesy Summit Entertainment)

It’s got great actors: Academy Award winners Adrien Brody and Rachel Weisz, nominee Rinko Kikuchi and a guy who shouldn’t be waiting a while for his call from the Academy, Mark Ruffalo. It’s got a great, young director and writer: Rian Johnson had gained a lot of notice for his debut film, Brick. And it’s got a cool plot built around a con game, great scenery and what appears to be a great sense of fun.

Is it everything it’s cracked up to be? Eh, not so much.

The Brothers Bloom divides critics on Rotten Tomatoes and rates a 60-percent score. It doesn’t fare much better on Metacritic, ranking a middling 55.

Fans of the movie like the quick dialogue and speedy pace, and Weisz is particularly singled out:

• Liz Braun of Jam! Movies points out where people will be split over the movie: “Absurd and whimsical: That’s the general territory. That’s also what seems to dictate whether people love this one or hate it, with little in-between.”

• Peter Sobczynski of eFilmCritic.com enjoys what Weisz brought to the table: “Although you may not like the film as a whole, only an ogre with a heart of stone could possibly resist Weisz’s work here.”

Those who don’t like it as much were not happy with the breakneck pace and found the whole thing too cute for its own good:

• Sounds like Tony Macklin might’ve needed a neck brace afterward: “The cons and twists pile up like debris. If The Brothers Bloom had one more twist I would have screamed.”

• Slate’s Dana Stevens says Johnson’s style orbits too close to another idiosyncratic director: “One question rings hollowly in the brain for the length this painfully twee romp: What hath Wes Anderson wrought?”

Drag Me To Hell: This is a much more universally enjoyed film, scoring an impressive 93-percent number on Rotten Tomatoes and an 84 on Metacritic. Most critics loved its mix of pure scares, schlock and a real wicked sense of humor.

Rossiter Drake of the San Francisco Examiner echoes a lot of critics (and fans of Evil Dead, etc.): “(Sam) Raimi takes a manic, tongue-in-cheek approach to horror that seems to revel in its own absurdity. Needless to say, he’s been missed.”

And, lest we forget, Drag Me to Hell is just plain scary, at least in the mind of Robbie Collin of News of the World: “I screamed out loud in genuine, save-me-now-Jesus terror for the first time since The Blair Witch Project.”

Dance Flick: Last week, we forgot the Wayans brothers’ latest comedic venture. Critics opinion? We shouldn’t worry about it.

The parody of recent dance films scores a limp 28-percent rating at RT and a slightly better 40 on Metacritic.

It seems like many critics felt punished by watching this movie, like Sean Means, writer for the Salt Lake Tribune: “Welcome to Wayans: The Second Generation — and the ‘do you really think that’s funny?’ gene didn’t skip them.”

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• The Brothers Bloom (popsyndicate.com)
• Film: Review: The Brothers Bloom (avclub.com)
• ‘Brothers Bloom’: On The Con, And We’re The Marks (npr.org)

Allison Lohman stars in 'Drag Me To Hell', Sam Raimi's return to horror. (AP/Universal Pictures)

With Drag Me to Hell, director Sam Raimi temporarily shrugs off the A-list status the Spider-Man movies earned him and returns to his disrespectable Evil Dead ways. The blood and guts may have been tamped way, way down, but the manic intensity and delirious mayhem of those earlier zombie romps remain intact.

On a story level, Drag Me to Hell sounds like the kind of movie drive-ins were once built for: Alison Lohman stars as Christine, a bank loan officer angling for a promotion who denies a craggy old hag (Lorna Raver) an extension on her eviction notice, then discovers the nasty crone has put a curse on her, guaranteeing a visit in three days from a demon named “Lamia’’ that will do to her what the film’s title promises. Read the full story