So it’s that time of year, time for some scary movie reviews and recommendations. I just got back from seeing the much hyped, the over hyped, “Paranormal Activity.” How to describe this movie . . . . I know! Hey, did you ever see “The Blair Witch Project?” If you answered yes, then you’ve also seen “Paranormal Activity!”

This movie I felt was a copy of “Blair Witch” even down to the marketing. Back when “Blair Witch” came out it was an indie film, no money behind it, no big studios were banking on it. They marketed it through a very clever website that made the movie seem real, authentic, as if it was a real documentary you were going to see. With “Paranormal Activity” a similar approach was taken. It was first shown in a handful of obscure out of the way theaters. A twitter campaign was launched to spread word and demand it in your city. It was expanded in a limited run in the top 15 cities. Finally now it’s opening more widely. With that much hype being put into it, I went in thinking it probably wasn’t going to be great.

Was it great? Well I have to say if there was never a “Blair Witch” then it probably would have been. However there was, and this just felt like a direct copy. Instead of three kids with a hand held camera going out into the woods to track down a local legend, a couple uses a hand held camera to try and catch the ghost haunting them on tape. In this case it really isn’t a ghost, more of a demon or evil entity. The entity is attached to the girl (Katie) and has been since she was a little girl (this is how these things tend to work in real life).

If you’ve seen the trailer, well sadly you’ve also seen just about every scary part of the movie. Most of the film is the boyfriend Micah carrying the camera around while his girlfriend Katie whines about how he’s just antagonizing this demon and making it worse. He boasts that he’s the man and he’s gunna solve this problem, they don’t need outside help. Only at night do most of the spooky things happen, and again most of them are in the trailer. They last for seconds only too. For half of them rather than being spooked, the theater was laughing.

Just as seeing “Blair Witch” in the theater did, the shaky hand held camera, often out of focus, just made me violently ill. If you are prone to motion sickness, migraines, etc; you will probably not like this film at all. I had to close my eyes for a lot of the second half because I was just ready to puke. Waiting for the small screen version minimizes this, it did for me at least when I saw “Blair Witch” on TV.

Yes I know I’m talking a lot about the “Blair Witch” in a review for this movie, but again, it’s impossible not to make the comparisons. I opened this review with the comment if you’ve seen the first, you’ve seen this one. And I mean it. Once you realize they’ve used the same formula, well it’s not hard to figure out how it’s going to end now is it?

This one I can’t really give a see it to. I can say rent it, if you have something like Netflix where you aren’t paying per rental. Otherwise wait for cable. I think the woman next to me in the theater said it best after the film ended. “We paid to see this?”

The next movie I’m gunna review is “House of the Devil,” which is currently playing on your cable box’s Video on Demand channel. It opens in theaters in a limited release on October 30th.