30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2013)

Comedy is a very subjective thing.  Everyone is going to react to the different styles of comedy in different ways.  There are many types of comedy that appeal to people’s diverse tastes.  Slapstick comedy involves more physicality than other comedy.  Verbal comedy tends to rely on timing and the ability to tell jokes in a humorous way.  Another big style of comedy in the modern era is referential comedy.  The most notable form of referential comedy, when considering this review, is pop culture based referential comedy.  Pop culture references are the basis for the parodies that are frequently released in the modern day.

One such parody is the long-windedly titled 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  For the remainder of the review, in order to make it less terrible to read, the movie will be referred to as 30 Nights.  30 Nights was directed by Craig Moss.  It stars Kathryn Fiore, Flip Shultz, and Olivia Alexander, with a notable appearance by French Stewart who, yes, is still around somewhere.  The basic plot of the movie is a mash-up of the Paranormal Activity and The Devil Inside with hints of many other films, and references to many other things.  It’s a modern parody movie.

Normally, I would say that the better parody movies are the ones that stick to a main storyline and try to riff off of one, two, maybe three movies.  There are always exceptions to the rule.  30 Nights is one of those exceptions.  Though consistently sticking to the plotline of the two movies I mentioned, something is off with this movie.  The blame would fall mostly upon the shoulders of the jokes.  None of the jokes are funny.  There were no laughs to be had throughout the movie.  This made for an extremely painful hour and a half.  The plot consists mostly of the two movies being combined. 
However, attempts at comedic portrayals of characters from other movies are also thrown into the mix.  These characters include the daughter (the titular Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), the neighbour (Abe Lincoln), and two paranormal investigators (riffing off of the two in Insidious).  These characters add to how forced the movie feels and only take away from what could have been an okay premise.  I can appreciate a parody movie when it is simply heightening a movie for comedy’s sake.  In this case, there were too many ingredients thrown into the pot which turned the stew rancid.

The main problem with modern parody films is that they get too bogged down in pop culture and making as many references as possible.  30 Nights suffers from this issue a little bit.  Whereas older parodies like Spaceballs or Airplane took an existing movie and flipped the genre into a comedy, the newer movies do that but also try to throw more and more current fads and popular culture at the screen.  Airplane took the story of a plane on which everyone was getting sick and/or dying, and created the comedy around that.  It seems that the parodies of the last decade seem to be going about it in the opposite direction.  They think about what they find funny, then choose a story to fit it into.  It feels unnatural.  30 Nights has a similar feeling to the newer parodies.  Every reference feels unnatural to the story.  The movie is primarily based on Paranormal Activity and The Devil Inside.  Why did it need to have the daughter be a direct reference to Lisbeth Salander?  There was nothing in the movie that benefited from this choice.  It did not further the plot or the comedy in any way.  It seemed like they decided what they wanted in their movie before deciding what movie to frame it with.

I’ve harped on long enough about parodies and the jokes in 30 Nights.  This is easily an early contender for my worst movie of 2013.  Nothing made me laugh throughout the movie.  No performance stood out as a good performance.  Most of them were on par with the material given to them.  This is one of the few times that I have ever failed to find a redeeming quality to a movie.  Take that as you will.  Whatever you do, do not seek this movie out.  It is a waste of an hour and a half of your life.  You will deeply regret not spending that time with your loved ones.

There is one note that I would like to make:

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