![]() To be clear, the Paranormal Activity franchise is not explicitly “about” the neoliberal condition of debtor capitalism there is no indication that the filmmaker consciously constructed it as an allegory, or, indeed, with any intended message beyond its overt plot about a demon terrorizing a young couple. The demon-creditor in Paranormal Activity resonates within the movie’s economic milieu, calling in its debt at the expense of all other concerns the affective experience of this horror movie aptly foreshadows the credit-crisis ‘structure of feeling’ of insecurity, helplessness, and dread in the face of enforced compliance with an economic contract. Things begin to go wrong for them when, eerily foreshadowing the housing crisis, a demon begins to toy with them, trying to collect on an ancestor’s Faustian bargain. Made just before the real estate crash and released two years after, at the height of the credit crisis, the movie centers on a young California couple in their vast new house. ![]() That year there were 2.8 million foreclosure filings and unemployment reached 10% in the United States (Adler). One of the most striking things about watching the horror movie Paranormal Activity nowadays is the way it portrays the American home just before the housing bubble burst, at the height of what President Bush called “the ownership society.” The film is set in September and October of 2006, the same year it was shot on a shoestring budget by writer, director, cinematographer, and editor Oren Peli, but it only gained wide release in 2009, when it was picked up by Paramount-DreamWorks.
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