16) Paranormal Activity

Micah sets up a camera in his bedroom to record his wife, Katie, who claims she is being haunted by an evil entity. As strange and inexplicable occurrences manifest in their home, the young couple learns that they may be in the grip of a demon that feeds on negative energy. And with every mistake they make, the couple are making it stronger…

Paranormal Activity may have spawned a line of successors that failed to live up to the original, but it’s easy to forget just how much new life it breathed into the found-footage genre as a method of storytelling. (Much more than Cloverfield, whose attempt to blend low-budget methods with high-budget spectacle just left audiences complaining that they couldn’t see the effects properly.)

The film’s secret lies in understanding that the anticipation is just as important as the release: much of the film passes in near silence, helping to build dread to a point where event relatively tame occurrences like a sheet moving under its own power acquire an extra edge of fear.

“IT’S RIGHT THERE!” “…that’s a shadow, honey.”