Paranormal Attraction
Ratings: 1.5/5
Duration: 01 Hr 29 Mins
Director: Alexander T. Hwang
Writers: Richard J. Aguirre, Alexander T. Hwang (Story)
Produced By: Richard J. Aguirre, Thomas Haley, Alexander T. Hwang, Kathleen W. Hwang, Pat Kusnadi
Genre: Horror
Release Date: 27th October 2020
Streaming Platform: Amazon Prime
Star Cast: Brooklyn Haley, Nicole Cinaglia, Hunter Johnson, Eden Shea Beck, Jennifer Nangle, Ashley Vetere, Robert Downs, Al Burke, Charles Chudabala, Darell M. Davie, Jackie Falcon, Thomas Haley, Siani Lee
Plot: Paranormal Attraction tells the dark and sinister tale of a young woman, Sara Myer (Brooklyn Haley), a somewhat down on her luck young entrepreneur, who is hired to clean out an abandoned home, as part of an estate sale.
Review: Sarah Mayer’s struggles in Alexander T. Hwang’s Paranormal Attraction is representative of a bigger societal problem. The film touches on many issues people (specifically women) experience throughout the course of their lives - abuse, stalking, and harassment. This film is never just about some scary being in a house, but there is a lot more being said, which is one of the most poignant pillars of horror.
However, centered around a strong message, Paranormal Attraction is humdrum and uninteresting. The 80 minutes of inconsistencies and a painfully slow build to a lackluster climax, leaves the audience wishing the film had something more to offer!
When it comes to the performances, actors are not highly experienced professionals who have been working in Hollywood for years. Though you do not need a cast like that to be fair, with plenty of movies starring actors who have never acted before, but still managing to impress, would make you wonder if they have been in the industry for several years. And this is not the case with the actors in Paranormal Attraction. They are not only relatively inexperienced; they genuinely feel that way too, as a lot of the time, the line delivery seems extremely weak and unfortunately quite noticeable. Whether this is a result of the written dialogue the casts had to work with or the cast performances remain unclear.
And as far as the technical aspects of the film are concerned, a large portion of the dialogue here feels incredibly cringe-worthy and generic. A lot of the scenes are filled with lines that do not do anything to propel the story forward. In short, the film should have gone through some fairly extensive rewrites, because this certainly feels like a first draft script in many regards.
Moreover, the editing quality is not favourable too, as, within the first 15 minutes of the film, the audio did not match up with the video. Even the special effects are not all that impressive.
Overall, ‘Paranormal Attraction’ fails at making the ‘scary’ scenes legitimately scary. The film probably had an incredibly small budget, which definitely is highly respectable, but it does not mean the final product ends up as an unintentionally hilarious, painfully unscary, and poorly acted disaster, with virtually no surprises up its sleeves! However, if you are a fan of horror flicks, ‘Paranormal Attraction’ is something you would want to see.
