Reviewed: Law Abiding Citizen and Paranormal Activity Two new films with different takes on dread

Law Abiding Citizen wants to be a court procedural, a revenge fantasy, an examination of good and evil in which all characters and their actions land squarely in a field of gray. The action is plentiful; the outsmarting a never-ending volley. With

Jamie Foxx and Gerald Butler starring, it will surely break the box office and have popcorn-munchers whooping.

Director F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job) and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer (Ultraviolet!) aren’t sheepish about flaunting their cinematic inspirations. Imagine a Batman/Joker face-off in Hannibal Lecter’s prison cage and you’ve got a pretty accurate picture of the repeated meetings between Foxx’s Nick Rice, a district attorney with a nearly perfect conviction rate, and Butler’s Clyde Shelton, an engineer who’s pushed to the dark side when the man who murdered his wife and daughter is set free. Rice accepted the plea bargain that did, at least, sentence the other half of the duo who invaded Shelton’s home to death. But Shelton never agreed to this deal, and when he sees the killer shaking hands with the D.A. after the trial, it is on.

And this is where Law Abiding Citizen stops being a second-rate Dark Knight (really, there’s even a paraphrase of that film’s “You complete me” conversation) and becomes a ridiculous, white-collar Saw. Shelton decides to wait 10 years—until the execution—to start exacting his revenge, which boils down to this line of dialogue: “I’ll kill everyone.” He has access to puffer-fish poison, a prison’s capital-punishment cocktail, even a dark warehouse in which he can Jigsaw bad guys. A cell phone becomes a remote-control handgun. A machine-gun-equipped robot stalks a burial. And, of course, cars explode.

Have I mentioned that most of Shelton’s murders happen while he’s in prison? That’s the nugget that will either keep audiences glued or make them feel insulted by such ludicrousness.

Either way, there’s no arguing that Law Abiding Citizen is ugly. Foxx and Butler may be sharp with their characters’ cat-and-mouse mind games, but good acting and quick banter can’t wash over this alleged thriller’s torture-porn heart. Even Viola Davis was tapped to class up the mess, with Gray obviously hoping her small role as a tough mayor will match her Oscar-nominated small role as a tough mother in last year’s Doubt. (It doesn’t.)

The body count rises—graphically—with seemingly every passing minute, the horror amplified by the fact that the majority of Shelton’s victims are innocent. The logic of his agenda, too, quickly falls apart—going after the bad guys and even those who set them free is fine. Killing “everyone,” not so much. Like Transformers, though, the abundance of violence will probably overwhelm your senses to the point of detachment. By the time Shelton warns Rice, “I’m just getting warmed up!” your repulsion will likely have turned to boredom.

Disregard the gimmicky marketing of Paranormal Activity. Yes, it is a bit inspired, with Paramount releasing the film in only a handful of cities, shooting a trailer that captures an audience’s reaction, and directing the unfortunate moviegoers who’d been left out to a Web site wherein they could “demand” it be brought to their town. Perhaps the studio really did tally the votes; more likely the plan was an old-fashioned slow rollout all along.

Either way, the buzz-building resulted in the late-night showings wedged into AMC Georgetown’s schedule the weekend of Oct. 2 selling out. (Even on Sunday!) And the bottom line is this: No amount of viral voodoo can sustain good box office if the movie sucks. (See: Watchmen.)

And Paranormal Activity definitely does not suck. It teases, it terrorizes, and it will burn images in your brain that will freak you the fuck out for days afterward.

The story involves a young couple who have recently moved in together. Katie and Micah (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, both believably natural) are attractive and happy, “engaged to be engaged.” Except for one problem: They suspect the presence of a supernatural being in the house, one that first started haunting Katie when she was 8. They consult a psychic (Michael Bayouth) but otherwise go DIY, buying a high-end video camera to record anything that might be going on while they sleep. Micah wants to goad the ghost into revealing itself to speed things along, but Katie is against the idea of even filming, afraid of making the situation worse. But the camera becomes a third character, capturing their discussion of the issue during the day and trained on their bed at night.

Paranormal Activity, which first-time ­writer-director Oren Peli made for $11,000, has logically been compared to the game-changing Blair Witch Project. Found-footage mocumentaries are so 1999, though, and this approach is the film’s biggest knock, with the “reality” of the situation highlighted with bobbing and weaving camerawork that gets nauseating fast. And really, what’s the point of this is-it-real-or-is-it-Memorex ploy? Everyone knows this didn’t really happen. And decades of horror films have proved that fiction can frighten quite effectively if done well.

Peli does it well. Most of the story actually takes place in pedestrian daylight, with Katie and Micah often quite funnily bickering about their options. Micah’s sarcastic and cowboy about it, disagreeing with Katie’s idea of bringing in a demonologist and saying, “This is my house, I’m going to solve the fucking problem, OK?” The audience sees only snippets of the nighttime footage, which always starts out quiet but with a time-stamp eventually showing the fast-forward to moments of activity.

It begins with little things, a creak here and footsteps there. But the activity worsens and the suspense builds, leading you to automatically brace the moment you see the couple asleep with text noting the date and time. And stuff. Gets. Freaky. Without giving too much away, Peli knows from creepy, borrowing a bit from horror classics but also demonstrating how shriek-inducing a person simply standing next to a bed can be. There’s no gore; there are no cheesy musical cues or cheap scares. It’s all just skin-crawling—until things come to a head. And then you may wish that Paramount went for a more retro gimmick from the days of monster schlock: Staffing each screening with “nurses” who could tend to the lightheaded and administer sedatives on your way out the door.