Paranormal Activity may be one of the biggest box-office success stories of the year. Viral marketing campaigns have thus far succeeded in framing the film as a cinematic event, and midnight screenings across the country have worked to solidify this quality – viewings where audience members have been encouraged to scream together in the dark and in general, to talk back. As the tagline says, “don’t see it alone” – a statement that underscores the way a film like this depends upon a collective experience for deliverance of its fullest meaning.

Recently given full commercial release by Paramount, the nature of this audience will necessarily change as the film is mainstreamed, with regular showings on the hour in addition to the midnight “events”. Not a “renter” by any means, Paranormal Activity continues to demand a certain kind of audience engagement as it fast approaches the status of pop culture sensation– with the question being, will you too participate in this hype machine?

Unquestionably, Paranormal Activity is scary, in large part due to its strategic placement of minimal visual effects, a necessity given the film’s shoestring budget of around $10,000. A story centered around a young couple’s dealing with paranormal events, the premise of the film is that this footage exists because of the boyfriend’s decision to record everything related to their struggle to understand, a decision that alienates his girlfriend. The couple’s growing antagonism (a result of the individuals’ vastly different approaches to the events) is largely responsible for structuring the narrative – tension that is more important than any single aspect of the plot.

Their lives, documented in banal, reality TV-like fashion, serve to counterbalance the film’s moments of intense audience anticipation, sequences where the camera is turned on the sleeping couple as they await proof of these happenings. Viewers perhaps come to relish these moments alone in the dark with the camera, when the annoying couple finally shuts up, and their sped-up bodies toss and turn as they unconsciously await whatever is going to happen that night. The inevitable freaky shit is thus a welcome relief from the couple’s on-screen company, and the terrible things that happen to them can perhaps be best understood as a form of wish fulfillment.

It is this sense of the inevitable and the constant quality of the frame that make for an exhilarating viewing experience, however artificial it may feel going in. While expecting something each night, you get to wondering what exactly is possible in terms of visual effects; in other words, how creative is writer-director Oren Peli? Expectations being shaped by knowledge of the limited budget, the effects that are achieved come to seem like small miracles. Overall, it’s this experience of delivery that becomes addictive, helping to make up for the couple’s tedious navigation and re-cap of these more purely cinematic events.

Spoiler: at the end of the film, there appears simply a gray screen, a static non-image that aggressively confronts the viewer. One last scare, you wonder? While waiting for this final pay-out, you get to paying attention to the people you’ve sat in the dark with – you listen to their nervous laughter and the slow, bodily release of some of their fears. Who are these people and what do they think they’re doing, waiting here with you? Their presence, alongside you, is chilling. And then the cinema elevator music starts up suddenly, and you’re posed with the familiar star trivia on the screen again. But it’s no longer comforting.