History Headscratchers / ParanormalActivity

** Umm... One, it's a demon. I don't think it would be stopped by a puny little barricade. Two, the characters pretty much stated that the only reason it left the footprints was to fuck with them, show it was real, and was only because it wanted to.

** I think it is pretty obvious that the demon doing anything physical, is entirely by his choice. The damn thing left those footprints not because Micah "caught" him, but simply to mess with them.

*** Not bad scriptwriting, just a creative decision - they did not want to make another exorcism movie. They could have gone for the 'fraudulent demonologist' spin though I'm not sure it would have made the movie better.

** Seconded so hard. I mean, they live in LA, right? There's got to be a dozen churches within easy distance. As soon as they realized it was a demon, they should have booked to a church and gotten an exorcist or twelve.
*** I recall in the beginning that it was stated that Micah and Katie were either agnostic or atheists. The problem with calling a priest when you aren't of that faith is that the exorcism may not work, since you aren't a believer in that particular religion. That goes doubly for an atheist or agnostic, and can even be seen as hypocritical. Or at least, that's what I've been, er, told.
*** It's not as if they could have just walked into a church and asked for a few "the power of Christ compels you"'s to be shouted at them. Exorcism is extremely dangerous and the Catholic Church does not perform them lightly. {{The Exorcist}} was a fairly "realistic" portrayal of how the exorcism process works. Before even considering performing the rite, everything else has to be ruled out first (illness, mental or otherwise) and THEN only with the approval of a local bishop. The process can take days (or longer) and [[spoiler:Regan nearly died, Father Merrin DID die and Father Karras threw himself out a window when he became possessed]].

** If I remember correctly, there's no clear indication in the movie that exorcisms work or that demons are weakened by Christian symbols, so it may not have even helped.

* If the demon had access to Hunter for days, why [[spoiler: did it take so long for his soul to be "harvested"?]] If it had to have physical possession of a body, okay, but then [[spoiler: why didn't Demon!Kristi! take him while possessed in the last 15 minutes of the film?]]

** I'm not too sure why, but according to a great many RealLife stories of demonic hauntings, demons tend to dwell (or hide, or mainly inhabit) basements or below-ground rooms. This counts as a case of ShownTheirWork here.

* In Paranormal Activity 3, why [[spoiler: did Witch!Grandma and the demon have Julie killed? If this was in fact the same demon from the first two movies, and grandma was complicit in the whole thing, it seems like it would make more sense to "turn" mommy in to a witch as well, or at least do whatever they ended up doing to the two girls. It seemed more like they were trying more to make a scary ending and half-explain things than for it all to make logical sense.]]

*** Now I'm wondering why Lois had them sleep in separate beds at her house. Obviously by then it seemed like it sunk in that she wasn't getting a grandson, but it seems to be implied that she's always kept them that way when they stayed over. I might think she would try to encourage more sexual practice.
*** I thought that Lois found Julie really annoying (especially with her constantly blowing off Dennis's claims about the cult).
* [=PA4=]: why didn't Alex call the police? She had a phone and it obviously worked!

*** I'm going to go write that fanfic now! :D
*** I would love to see that fanfic.

*** This is assuming that in the Paranormal Activity universe, Christianity is true. Christianity isn't the only belief system that acknowledges demons, after all. Maybe a Wiccan ritual would have banished the demon instead of a cross. Maybe God and his Prophet Muhammad could have. Still, as an atheist/agnostic myself, I would not remain so if I were confronted with this sort of thing, and I would show the evidence to a pastor immediately. If that didn't work, just try other religions until something works.

* That was a damn fine house they lived in. How in God's name did they afford that place? Micah was the only one with a job if I recall correctly. Were their parents paying for it? Did they inherit it? I know in real life it's the director's house but still....

*** I figure he's some sort of conman. It explains quite a lot about him, actually...

*** But then wouldn't Katie have known the picture wasn't burned up in the house fire in the first movie? Wasn't she there when they rediscovered the picture in an old photo album in the prequel? I can't remember if she was present or not.

** Basically, I took it as him panicking. The demon doesn't actually do things ''specifically'' to Dennis until the end, after all - he just sees stuff happening to other people on his tapes. 'Toby' messes more with the girls' babysitter than it does him, so he kind of gets slammed head-first into the maelstrom of fear and chaos at the end there, whereas previously he'd just been an outside observer.

** Hunter was never switched at birth. Wyatt is Hunter. Sometime after Paranormal Activity 2, Katie placed Hunter under adoption. There are many theories as to why this happened. The first is that it is believed Hunter needed to be grown in a 'normal' environment before whatever ritual the coven wants him to partake in can be done. This, to me, makes little sense with the events in PA2. The demon possessed Kristi and would have continued raising Hunter there if her husband never transferred the curse over to Katie. The second theory is that Possessed!Katie had to let go of Hunter as the police were probably chasing her down for the murders and kidnapping. Hunter could be raised in an environment that would not be connected to Katie or the coven and she could always find him again.
* Why exactly was Alex filming everything at the beginning of PA4? The very beginning with the soccer game can be overlooked as family footage, but a lot of other things, like most of the dialogue with Ben and Alex, are filmed without an explanation. This is done a bit in the earlier movies, but the lack of reasoning stuck out more in the latest film.
* PA4: What was the whole deal with the knife? It disappeared and then flashily reappeared... but didn't seem to serve any particular purpose.

** Not really, his MO is to create an unsafe atmosphere, making people feel vulnerable so that their fear empowers him. Hence the progressive attacks in the first two movies. He gains power, establishes himself within the house's threshold, and then strikes for the kill. In PA2, for example, he does things that cannot be otherwise explained, such as moving the pool floater, turning on the stove, and slamming/locking the front door. It makes the target family feel stalked by a predator. Here, though, the knife doesn't accomplish anything. It confuses the mother and startles the father, but that's it, it doesn't build to any conclusion. It just scares the audience.
* PA4: During Wyatt's bathtime (don't worry, there wasn't any nudity...which would bring into FridgeHorror that Alex's plan to record the house meant that she inadvertently recorded her brother bathing naked), before he was pulled underwater, the cartoon his laptop was playing suddenly stopped. How come the demon, if it did that, didn't shut off the recording too?

** It was the 80's, that's was a way to make a slideshow of photos back then quickly and easily.

* PATMO: Why didn't Arturo bring more homies with him when he was helping Marisol and Hector look for Jesse?

** Probably, and I'd hope, kill the bitch.

* About Katie staying. Was she into self-harming or what? Why didn't she just move out? The demon would still be after her, but she wouldn't have an asshole who kept on messing things for her.
** What good would leaving do? One less person who believes her, a demon that's more violent and sadistic than ever, and all professionals being too scared to help, what could leaving possibly do to improve her situation?

*** you mean the way she got annoyed over him trying to get a rise out of a dangerous demon? The way she got annoyed over repeatedly being ignored by an idiot? The way she got annoyed over Micah deciding to get a ouija board, after being asked repeatedly not to??? Katie came from a rich family. Why would she need his money?

*** Hey, her leaving would have saved him at least. Since her continued survival in the sequels kills even more people, really the best thing she could have done was to kill herself. I would pay money to see that, especially after all the tropers act like she's completely blameless and Micah is a jerkass who gets himself killed. No, really, I hate this character of hers. HE is a jerk? She's an absolute bitch who screams at him for not immediately jumping to "ghost attack", and then screams at him even more as soon as he accepts it as a possibility and tries to solve something. What could he have done? Nothing, really, except leave her. But then a bunch of tropers would of course hate out on him even more for it: No matter what Micah does, it's wrong! Katie never once did anything wrong of course, she's perfect and justified in every action of hers.
*** your response is baffling. Are you the type who think childish men are always in the right and their girlfriends are wrong for being mature? Micah acted like a total prat throughout most of the movie. Katie wasn’t a “bitch”. She was scared and her manchild of a boyfriend wouldn’t take anything seriously, until it was too late.

*** I wouldn't say she's "perfect and justified" but between the two Micah is still the bigger asshole. His tone and demeanor throughout most of the film make it pretty obvious that, while he may be trying to help, he's completely unwilling to listen to any advice, or even realize that his actions are frightening his girlfriend, and is entirely too interested in getting things on camera (even asking if Katie can "make it happen." Seriously, dude, you ''want'' her to try to induce something that terrifies her?). Besides, most of his "help" consisted of doing just about everything he could to aggravate the demon, despite everyone telling him to stop. To be honest, I would probably be just as angry with him in Katie's shoes. At least she had the sense to keep saying, "Let's not piss it off anymore." Katie did have her moments (perhaps the biggest offender being not telling Micah about the demon before moving in together), but Micah's are much more blatantly stupid.

** The entity that could have helped him? what was it going to do kick his front door down and stand there in a macho pose with a red head band on and say "I kick ass for the Lord!." and then work over the Demonic force in the house?.

* In the fourth movie after Ali reversed the car through the garage door why did Dan just send Her to bed instead of trying to get an explanation for what just happened?

** Micah was playing the stockmarket. Maybe the Demon bought some shares from him that ended up losing their value and took it exceptionally hard.

** Or it's just a simple case of [[FriendsRentControl Friends Rent Control]].
*** The house they live in is the director's house, and when he lived there, he lived alone. So this is kinda [[TruthInTelevision Truth in Television]].
** when he comes home with the camera, Katie asks him how much it costs and he says something like, "About half of what I made today." If that's an indication of what he makes on a normal day, then he makes a fair amount of money as a day trader.
* Spoilers just to be safe. In the first movie, Katie flips out when [[spoiler:Micah finds an old picture of her]] because [[spoiler:it was supposed to be destroyed in a house fire]]. So how is Dan able to [[spoiler:retrieve and burn the picture]] in the second movie?
** (Spoiler tags are generally not needed on IJBM pages, btw.) The second movie--at least up to the point where Katie appears and murders Dan and Kristi--is a ''prequel,'' not a sequel. Early in the movie, Kristi finds the photo in an album and remarks on it, and Dan later burns it, apparently as part of the ritual meant to pass the demon from Kristi to Katie. Why it wasn't burned completely at that point, I can't tell you, but there's your answer.

*** As for why it wasn't burned completely — probably for the same reason that it was in Katie and Micah's crawlspace when it should have still been at Kristi and Dan's house: The demon did it.

*** I agree with the line above. Burning the photo a bit was part of the spell and Dan sneaking it into the attic above Katie's bed was probably part of the spell, which gave some retroatcive meaning to the original film.
* What exactly did the ouija board spell out in the first movie?

*** "Aaaahahaha, you're not going to have sex with me because I made a crude joke on the ouija board. Never mind, let's keep going and I'll try something else later. Sure I'll keep my hands on the cursor and ignore that we just asked the entity what it wants."

** The boyfriend was jokingly spelling "PUSSY" on his own. When he stopped goofing off, the demon started spelling "HUNTER," but the kids took their hands off the board before it could spell teh rest of it, which led to the joke about "pussy hunt."

*** That solution was what they came up with in the first one. I think that was to give it a feel like Blair Witch and to make it seem like it was based on a true story. This is probably also the reason they left the credits off the end to leave a little room for doubt for anyone who has a chance to believe that's the case. As for the second movie, they added the cameras to the house in response to the break-in and vandalism that happene when they were away. That seems like a logical response to me. It was only after weird things started happening, like the pool cleaner ending up out of the water all the time, that they decided to review what the cameras saw.

** I've had this running theory that some''thing'' is making people record stuff. Whether it's the demon, for its own nefarious reasons, or a different entity entirely, for nefarious or possibly even non-nefarious reasons, is up for debate. It's possible that, since people keep finding the footage, ''Literature/CloudAtlas'' style, it'll be part of finding a solution in the grande finale. I mean, each movie has characters trying something to find out about the demon, or learning more about how it works/what it wants. Put all the pieces together and you might find a way to beat the thing.

** Traditionally, most cultures considered the first born son to be the most "valuable" child. Even if it didn't matter to the demon, persay, the Grandma might have still specified "firstborn son" when she summoned it.

** A thought, if Hunter's soul is so important (even if it's only because he's the first born son), that seems to imply in the paranormal activity universe at least, souls exist. The soul is believed to be what lives after death, and in the case of reincarnation. The demon may wait for the soul of Katie or Kristi (or any of their dead relative's) soul to be reborn, and grow. Until another male is born to those descendants?

*** To be fair, let's say he did kick the ever living piss out the old ladies... Then the police came. Not much Dennis can do to protect Katie/Kriti if he's locked up in jail for attacking old ladies, whom he claims are demon cult worshipers.

** Or he was, you know, a human being. Sure, old ladies aren't the epitome of "dangerous," but how did most people react when the scene occurred--turning on the lights to see a bunch of creepy women (billed as such, too) staring at you and beginning to pursue you?

** It may have been odd, but wasn't she on a school trip at the time? (I don't remember specifically, so I could be wrong.) In which case, it may have been something she considered odd and, given what she and her family had been through, probably set her on alarm, but the teachers who organized the trip aren't going to end it for the sake of getting one girl back home to check on her parents, who the teachers probably are going to assume are just not answering for various reasons. Really, if she was going to be gone for several days, it's more surprising that she was the one to find them or a neighbor checking on them (especially since I doubt the demon would lock the doors behind it), or friends investigating why they hadn't been at work or something, or even the police, coming to let Kristi know that Micah was dead and Katie was missing and his presumed killer.
* If the demon granted a wish to the grandmother in return for the first born male, why did the demon burn the house down when Katie and Kristie were kids and risk killing them in the process?

* In regards to the fourth movie... [[spoiler: Who. The. Fuck. Was. Robbie?!]]
** Judging by the amount of [[spoiler:young inductees in the coven, shown in the climax when Alex is killed, he's probably the child of one of them, raised within the demon's influence]].
** No one really knows. [[spoiler: Popular theories are it is Tobi or, more likely, another demon disguising as a child. A golem as the statue at the end that Wyatt/Hunter is standing next to resembles Robbie. Or another child born of the coven who may have completed the ritual.]]
** [[spoiler: [[http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1696149/paranormal-activity-5.jhtml The directors in this video]] essentially confirm that Robbie was messenger of the coven.]]
* Another about the fourth movie: Was the implication that [[spoiler: the child Kristi and Dan had was switched at birth with the real Hunter or something? Or did Katie somehow lose Hunter after she took him?]]
** [[spoiler: Hunter was never switched at birth. Wyatt is Hunter. Sometime after Paranormal Activity 2, Katie placed Hunter under adoption. There are many theories as to why this happened. The first is that it is believed Hunter needed to be grown in a 'normal' environment before whatever ritual the coven wants him to partake in can be done. This, to me, makes little sense with the events in PA2. The demon possessed Kristi and would have continued raising Hunter there if her husband never transferred the curse over to Katie. The second theory is that Possessed!Katie had to let go of Hunter as the police were probably chasing her down for the murders and kidnapping. Hunter could be raised in an environment that would not be connected to Katie or the coven and she could always find him again.]]

* So, how much [[spoiler: control over her actions does Katie have?]] Because being controlled by the demon seems to have [[spoiler: robbed her of her free will in killing Micah, her sister, and her sister's husband.]] So, in the fourth movie, [[spoiler: did she make a FaceHeelTurn or was she ForcedIntoEvil?]]

*** You are correct, dear Troper. I have only heard of one person call themselves a demonologist who was not affiliated with a church. And since Micah and Katie were agnostic, they wouldn't have called a priest anyway.

*** RealityIsUnrealistic, there would be a fair number of poeple who would antagonize the supernatural hellbeast for a varity of reasons (spite, disbelief, just wanting to see the world burn, etc.).

*** Micah pretty clearly didn't believe in the demon to start with, or if he did, it was as a parlor gag (think the "ghost theme park" plans in Beetlejuice.) His main motivation for the cameras was to catch something really cool on tape, get his fifteen minutes of fame, and maybe make some money. Which is why he went about antagonizing it: nothing the demon had done yet on film was "cool" enough to be marketable. He also had a completely unrealistic (if that's the right word when one is talking about a demonic antagonist in a found footage horror movie) expectations of what the demon was and what it could do, since he had no frame of reference. Katie, who'd lived with this thing her whole life, knew that shit would get really bad if Micah didn't lay off, and tried several times to warn him. He didn't listen, because as the old saying goes, only the burned believe in fire. Sure, once it becomes obvious that the demon is actually real, and a threat, he ignores a lot of the advice, but that can easily be put down to male ego. As mentioned, he wanted to protect what was "his:" his girlfriend and his house. Basically, early in the film, he didn't believe the demon could be a threat, so he provoked it because he wanted to get something really cool on film. Once he realized it was a threat, it was way too late to do anything about it. Sure, it's stupid, but it's also a very understandable human reaction. We often don't see the lines until we're way past them. Hence another old saying, "hindsight is always 20/20."

*** it might not get stronger from sleep deprivation but any person deprived of sleep is certainly weaker.

** Besides, nothing said that the demon ''had'' to be active only at night. A few things ''did'' happen in the daytime... [[spoiler:Namely, the picture breaking and Katie's possession.]]

*** It's not as if they could have just walked into a church and asked for a few "the power of Christ compels yous" to be shouted at them. Exorcism is extremely dangerous and the Catholic Church perform them lightly. {{The Exorcist}} was a fairly "realistic" portrayal of how the exorcism process works. Before even considering performing the rite, everything else has to be ruled out first (illness, mental or otherwise) and THEN only with the approval of a local bishop. The process can take days (or longer) and [[spoiler:Regan nearly died, Father Merrin DID die and Father Karras threw himself out a window when he became possessed]].

*** And even that's assuming the existence of the "demon" is really related to the existence of the traditional religious concept of a God. The movie establishes that thee are sinister forces at play, but the supernatural mechanisms behind them may have nothing to do with anything similar to what we believe to be the god of the universe.

* Why did the demon seem to "live" in the basement if it's a noncorporeal entity? I can understand "living" in the house to have constant access to the family, but why the basement? Did it just want to "live" in a place that inspires fear in people to make it stronger?
** I'm not too sure why, but according to a great many RealLife stories of demonic hauntings, demons tend to dwell (or hide, or mainly inhabit) basements or belowground rooms. This counts as a case of ShownTheirWork here.

** The whole point of the demon working with the family is to get a son. The mother already said she had no intention of having anymore kids, and the father showed he was against whatever plot grandma had. In order to get what they want, they would have to brainwash two adults who are very hostile to the demon. Not only are children easier to manipulate, but they both have a chance of having a son later in life. And the children weren't really hostile to the demon; one made the demon her imaginary friend, and the other was probably so scared shitless that she went along with it, neither of them really fought the demon like the adults did. This demon doesn't care about getting a lot of recruits; whoever shows resistance to it, it just kills. Unlike the other movies, the leading woman didn't roll over in negativity, she seemed just as hostile as the leading man, and so she gets the same fate as the leading man.

* PA4: why didn't Alex call the police? She had a phone and it obviously worked!

* Why didn't Alex show her dad the video of her being locked in the garage or at least mention the existence of the video. It's a massive over-sight in the found footage concept.

*** This will sound geeky, but consider this - It appears Alex was somehow unable to open the .mov files being recorded and Ben only arrived just in time to get killed off to avert any recovery attempts. But if the files being recorded are QuickTime files, on Apple laptops, where's the difficulty in simply finding and clicking on the files?

** I think it is pretty obvious that the demon doing anything physical, is entirely by his choice. The damn thing left those footprints not because Micah "caught" him , but simply to mess with them.

*** This Troper is fairly sure that demonologists ''aren't'' that common. Priests, on the other hand...

* Did either of them ever hear of a church? This troper would've slept in one and bathed in holy water.

*** Now this troper is wondering why Lois had them sleep in separate beds at her house. Obviously by then it seemed like it sunk in that she wasn't getting a grandson, but it seems to be implied that she's always kept them that way when they stayed over. I might think she would try to encourage more sexual practice.

*** Not necessarily. Though what it *would* have done is made more of the audience have sympathy for Micah and Katie, and thus make more people have an emotional investment in whether they made it out alive and intact or not. The fact that they didn't make it should have been tragic. At least for this Troper, it wasn't.

* Something that really confused this troper, when he is fully aware that something of the demonic persuasion was trying to possess his girlfriend, what does he do? ''Throws a frickin' cross into the fireplace''! Seriously? What's that going to do? Other than piss off the one entity left who could probably help you?

*** This troper would love to see that fanfic.

*** Also true. This troper isn't quite sure what to think about that cross--on the one hand, maybe Katie was using it as a last resort, and Micah's burning it actually made things worse. On the other, Katie ''was'' bleeding, and it's possible that the demon was just messing with Micah.

* That was a damn fine house they lived in. How in God's name did they afford that place? Micah was the only one with a job if I recall correctly. Were their parents paying for it? Did they inheirit it? I know in real life it's the director's house but still....

*** This troper figures he's some sort of conman. It explains quite a lot about him, actually...

** Katie clearly came from a rich family. Not every female character you dislike is a gold digger. The way she treated him? Like the pathetic manchild he was?

* So who's actually finding these tapes? The franchise never explains this. Especially part 5, who found the footage? I mean we're all supposedly watch "found footage" right? So who's leaking/releasing them?. Is it a group of amateur detectives, law enforcement, TheGovernment?... Who?

*** what are you talking about? First of all, no one calls Katie perfect. Second of all, Micah was an absolute idiot, who ignored Katie’s wishes at every turn. The fact that she put up with such a moron, showed that she had a lot of patience.
*** you sound like someone who thinks immature men are great and women who don’t act like stupid children are just bitches.

** Or it decided to punish the rest of humanity. It did so by making sure these films got released. After all, having to watch these films is quite a terrible fate...
*** you were forced to watch these movies?

*** It's not as if they could have just walked into a church and asked for a few "the power of Christ compels yous" to be shouted at them. Exorcism is extremely dangerous and the Catholic Church perform them lightly. {{The Exorcist}} was a fairly "realistic" portrayal of how the exorcism process works. Before even considering performing the rite, everything else has to be ruled out first (illness, mental or otherwise) and THEN only with the approval of a local bishop. The process can take days (or longer) and [[spoiler:Regan nearly died, Father Merrin DID die and Father Karras threw himself out a window when he became possessed]]. And, as a previous troper said, since Micah and Katie were agnostic/athesit, the church would be even less inclined to intervene.

** I've had this running theory that some''thing'' is making people record stuff. Whether it's the demon, for its own nefarious reasons, or a different entity entirely, for nefarious or possibly even non-nefarious reasons, is up for debate. It's possible that, since people keep finding the footage, [[CloudAtlas Cloud Atlas]] style, it'll be part of finding a solution in the grande finale. I mean, each movie has characters trying something to find out about the demon, or learning more about how it works/what it wants. Put all the pieces together and you might find a way to beat the thing.

* Micah: new poster child for TooDumbToLive, anyone? He kept pretty much provoking the damn thing, even when he ''knew'' it was real and dangerous. There's a difference between bravery and stupid bravado.
** And just plain stupidity.
*** Why the huge hate-on for Micah? To me, it just seemed he was possessed by a [[IncrediblyLamePun "spirit of experimentation"]]
*** Really, why the hate-on for Micah? What was he supposed to do? He tried to solve the problem, which is more than we can ever say for Katie, who's a complete idiot in every way. She tries to solve the problem with a medium, but freaks the hell out when Micah brings a Ouija board. She's told specifically that running won't help but that's the only thing she's ever tried in her life. If Micah's too dumb to live for any reason, it's because he decided to stick with the girl. Nothing else he could do would have saved him.
*** He didn't try to solve the problem, he continued to provoke it to doing things. Which is also what a Ouija board does. Meet up with anyone who believes in spirituality/wicca/etc, and everyone will tell you Ouija boards are bad news because they just invite all energies to come forward. A medium just reads the energy in the air, it doesn't make shit worse until the thing is powerful enough, as evidenced near the end. Not to mention Micah was antagonizing her and the demon for the first half of the movie, and makes damn stupid decisions the second half so he's a jackass to boot.
*** Seconded. Micah is the one who makes the problem worse. He tells Katie ''not'' to call the demonologist, talks to the demon, buys a Ouija board...this Troper is going to say that a lot of the stuff that happens in the movie is his fault.
*** Given the second and third movies show us where the demon comes from and what it actually wanted, Micah's pissing it off probably didn't do all that much. This is something that burned down their house in the past. It has, in fact, gotten that bad before then. All the demon did was show Micah the extent of its power...
* He's also a major JERK, because he kept toying and making fun of the entity without thinking that this entity ''was after his girlfriend''. And Katie? Was she into self-harming or what? Why didn't she just move out? The demon would still be after her, but she wouldn't have an asshole who kept on messing things for her.

* Imagine you are stuck in a house with Micah for '''three years''', not being able to leave or touch anything but listen to him constantly 24 hours a day since he doesn't even have a job to make him leave the damn house. Oh, and you're a supernatural entity who cannot sleep, cannot entertain yourself, and can barely move a set of keys around. Oh, and he plays guitar, badly. Now imagine after three years of this hellish existence this jerkoff starts calling you names and whining about you and insulting you. That's the real FridgeHorror of this movie. Who wouldn't want to carve him up at that point?
** The demon wasn't shown to be hanging around Katie when she was with Micah until that last month though, which shows just how damn annoying he really was.
*** This Troper now subscribes to this theory.
* This troper found Dan to be an even bigger jerkass than Micah. Okay, not really, but seriously, his daughter shows him the tape, the door slams shut for ''no fucking reason'' but oh, it's just "the wind." Even if it had come in through the windows, it would have to be a relatively strong wind to blow the door shut!
** And even if he could convince himself that it was just the wind, how could he have explained the door locking on its own?
** To be fair, he ''was'' still supremely angry at Ali for going outside by herself in the middle of the night - a reasonable reaction from a parent. That said, the door not only slamming closed, but ''locking'' on its own should have had him at least inspecting the doors to see if they were in proper working order. That's a safety hazard there, Dan.
*** This Troper was more bothered by the fact that Dan didn't seem to care how terrified Ali was after locking herself out of the house. Maybe it's because this troper isn't a parent, but I sympathized way more with Ali than with Dan.
*** The foolish reactions of [[TheUnfairSex all the menfolks in these movies]] seems to be based on just about every televised account of a [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory 'real' haunting]] I've seen. The kids and the wife see all the supernatural weirdness and start to freak, but [[BumblingDad dear old daddy]] never admits to it, even if he's just seen Lucifer tap-dancing down the hall while playing a polka version of ''Highway to Hell'' on an accordion. Really, after a while it starts to feel like [[XMeetsY Scooby-Doo meets the Lifetime Channel]].
* Forget the men folk, how about Julie in the 3rd movie? All that stuff we just bitched about Dan for happens with her, only worse?

* The footprints in the flour. Judging by their size, the demon/whatever seems to be about four feet tall. Adorable!
** How do you judge its height based on their ''size?'' Are you referring to their ''depth?'' And keep in mind that the demon could leave footprints of any depth according to its preference, and if you could see what the demon looked like it would not be adorable, even if it was only four feet tall.
*** You have a point. I don't think anthropologists can guess a person's height from the size of their feet--I'm pretty sure they need a leg bone or something else for that. Also, not everyone who is tall has big feet--my entire family (except my mother) has smaller than average feet despite the fact that most of us are taller than average. Thanks, Dad!
*** It had three toes. I'm going to guess ''not'' adorable, unless it looked like some sort of miniature Big Bird.
*** It had three toes, about for feet tall, a complete and total SOB... are you sure the demon isn't freeza from dragon ball Z?
** [[EnfantTerrible Aaaaaaaah!]]
** Remember, the original depiction of demons (before they were associated with Greek Gods like Pan) gave them ''bird's'' feet rather than a cloven hoof. Trying to judge height based on the size of the feet might not work as well as it could using human proportions.
** In the fourth movie, [[spoiler:the Kinect's tracking dots DO outline a pint-sized, child-shaped entity, even when the children aren't looking at it. Who says demons have to be large to be menacing]]?

* Sure, if they moved to another house the new people wouldn't believe them. But if they woke up in the middle of the night to find their new tenant being dragged down the hall by absolutely nothing whatsoever, then they -would- believe...
** And how would that have helped the situation?
*** Maybe the neighbor would be more sensible than either Micah or Katie and would call an exorcist.
* Did anybody else think the "scary noises" in the middle of the night just sounded like the demon was playing the drums? It seemed less like a threatening presence in the house and more like an annoying roommate.
** I had a similar thought, specifically "NEIL PERT'S BECOME A VENGEFUL SPIRIT!!"
*** Sure it wasn't Keith Moon? It'd explain why he trashed the house in the sequel.
** To me it sounded more like someone walking around a house in the middle of the night and slamming their foot into one thing after another while trying not to curse outloud.
* The fact that the entity is explicitly stated to be a demon rather than a ghost. Maybe this is just personal preference. Ghost? Scary. Demon? A little too far out of the realm of possibility for me to willingly suspend my disbelief. Same reason I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the GhostHunters during the first couple of seasons when they'd start talking about "demonic" hauntings as opposed to the other kind.
** What? I'm not trying to be rude, but that stament is very confusing. Could you please clarify so that I can make an appropriate response?
*** They're saying that they couldn't take the movie seriously because it's a lot easier for them to believe in a ghost than a demon. Definitely a personal thing, for some people it's the other way around.
** If it makes you feel better, just assume that demon means "Inherently evil ghost"
*** No it does not. In the context of this movie a "ghost" means the spirit of a former living human being. AFAICR when the ghost expert says the entity is a demon, he even adds "for lack of a better word". He doesn't mean that it's a red scaly creature with horns and a tail that serves [[Music/BlackSabbath the Prince of Darkness]]. He just made clear this being is not a "ghost" ''per se'' since it is not now nor was it ever human... it's ''something else''.
*** An EldritchAbomination?
*** Essentially, yes. Also, FairFolk. The problem with trying to understand the psychology of something that is not and never has been human is that we are and always have been human. This automatically and permanently renders us incapable of understanding its wants and needs. This is the first lesson in theoretical xenopsychology — trying to guess how aliens would act, should we ever meet them. Now back to the EldritchAbomination portion, we don't even know which rules of physics apply to it and which don't. For all we know there could be a "just as scared of you as you are of him" situation in effect. Rewatch the movie. Go into it with the mindset of someone who found Micah's body and is trying to figure out what happened. Then come back here and discuss.
*** I just took "demon" as meaning "negative psychic force", which worked for the first movie, but went right out the window when they start talking about deals with evil in the sequel.

** I always assumed it meant an incorporeal entity packing a lot of bad mojo.

* Not a gripe against the movie, but more of feeling bad for Ali. I just think it's a damn shame that she found the footage of the door slamming shut, but not of Hunter begin pulled out of his crib. Her dad might have believed her much sooner if that had been the case. Though since she only knew about the door, it makes sense that that's what she was searching for.

* This is something I noticed in the third and fourth movie; apparently the demon is vulnerable to grown men. Think about it; apart from the first one, in which the demon was probably as annoyed with Micah as the audience was, in the second one, Katie kills Dan first, in the third, Dennis manages to put up quite a fight, and in the fourth Alex says that [[spoiler: Doug was the only one who could make Wyatt/Hunter get out of his trances]]. It kind of makes sense, since the cult is apparently made up of only women and women can get possessed quite easily.

*** [[WordOfGod Word of God]] says that the crucifix that Katie was holding, while not doing much against the demon, was the only thing left protecting her. (And honestly, if I were an atheist and an actual real live demon started setting things on fire and screwing up my sleep schedule, [[ArbitrarySkepticism I'd start believing really, really fast]].

* So, how much [[spoiler: control over her actions does Kristi have?]] Because being controlled by the demon seems to have [[spoiler: robbed her of her free will in killing Micah, her sister, and her sister's husband.]] So, in the fourth movie, [[spoiler: did she make a FaceHeelTurn or was she ForcedIntoEvil?]]

** I've had this running theory that some'''thing''' is making people record stuff. Whether it's the demon, for its own nefarious reasons, or a different entity entirely, for nefarious or possibly even non-nefarious reasons, is up for debate. It's possible that, since people keep finding the footage, [[CloudAtlas Cloud Atlas]] style, it'll be part of finding a solution in the grande finale.

**** Pissing it off wasnt even really the heart of the problem. Micah gave it reasons to voice itself and maybe act quicker than it would have, but it wanted Katie either way, and it probably would have gotten do her sooner or later.