Paranormal Activity (Cert 15, 85 mins)
Stars: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs
Directed by Oren Peli
Rating: 4/5

HOW do you go about turning $15,000 into $100m?

If you’re enterprising Israeli-born film-maker Oren Peli, you write and direct a low-budget supernatural horror movie, shoot it at your own house in your spare time and watch as that modest vision becomes a 21st-century Blair Witch Project.

Paranormal Activity is a phenomenon, scaring the bejeezus out of audiences with its deceptively simple narrative and grainy camerawork, captured by characters as they hunt for an evil spirit in their home.

Various cuts of the film have been screened at festivals around the world, but the version set to terrorise British cinema-goers is a genuinely creepy encounter with things that go bump in the night.

The writer-director cranks up the suspense gradually until we’re almost holding our breath, anticipating the next episode of ghostly interference.

Unlike the recent glut of torture porn thrillers, which slather the screen in blood and entrails, Peli’s film exercises restraint to the heart-stopping finale.

Less is more, and the suggestion of unseen evil in the house is far more unnerving than a blitzkrieg of expensive special-effects – what you can’t see can kill you. Micah (Micah Sloat) lives in San Diego with his girlfriend Katie (Katie Featherston), who senses a spirit watching over her. Reluctantly, Katie agrees to let Micah capture evidence of the haunting on his new video camera by setting up a tripod in the bedroom to record everything that happens as they sleep.