25 things you didn’t know about your favorite horror movies

Paranormal Activity – No scripts, no sets, and barely any budget

Paranormal Activity is a true testament to the fact that you don’t need a lot of money to make a great movie. The film cost roughly $15,000 to produce and ended up earning a whopping $193 million at the box office, according to Forbes.

A young couple moves into a nice suburban starter house, and obviously, they think nothing can possibly go wrong. They become increasingly aware of some kind of demonic presence that has been wreaking havoc on their home in the middle of the night when they’re trying to sleep. It starts out with little things, like the bedroom door moving by itself, but soon it gets much worse. The supernatural activity is caught on the cameras around their house.

The most interesting thing about this movie is the production. The entire film was shot at director Oren Peli’s home, and he shot the whole thing with a home digital camera. The actors weren’t even given scripts, but instead were given guidelines before scenes on how to behave and what kinds of things they should discuss.

Since the film was so small scale, it took less than two weeks to shoot the entire thing. All the visual effects were simple camera tricks, enhanced on Peli’s computer while editing. And the stars of the film, Katie Featherson, and Micah Sloat, were reportedly only paid $500 each for their role in the movie. However, since the movie made millions of dollars, they (hopefully) got a nice bonus.

The simplicity of Paranormal Activity is reminiscent of another surprise horror hit, The Blair Witch Project. At the time of the release of that movie, many people thought it was an actual found-footage documentary.