Studio: Paramount Pictures
Released: 2012
Rated: R
Genre: Horror
Directed By: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Starring:
- Katie Featherston – Katie
- Kathryn Newton – Alex
- Sprague Grayden – Kristi
- Matt Shively – Ben
- Brady Allen – Robbie
- Stephen Dunham – Doug
- Alexondra Lee – Holly
- Brian Boland – Daniel
- William Juan Prieto – Hunter
- Aiden Lovekamp – Wyatt
The Paranormal Activity series of movies is one that I have come to really enjoy. There is something about these “found footage” movies that can really produce a good scare. The found footage phenomenon started way back with the release of “The Blair Witch Project” back in 1999. There were probably others before that, but that was the first one that I can remember. It involves creating a film in a home video type format to heighten the sense of realism. There are few credits at the beginning and basically no music score, so that you feel as if you are watching someone’s home videos that were found and released to the public just to warn us of the horrors that are out there waiting for us.
If done right it can create some truly frightening moments, be filmed fairly quickly, and costs much less than the typical Hollywood blockbuster to produce. This is a recipe for a great money maker to all involved.
To date, the Paranormal Activity series has been superb. The first movie introduced us to Katie and Micah, and we watch in
The second movie took us back in time a few weeks before the first movie to meet Katie’s sister Kristi. It turns out that the evil actually started at their home. When the weird things start happening, the family sets up surveillance cameras to capture the action. It was a brilliant move that allowed a logical way to capture multiple camera shots so that we could follow all the action without having someone having to physically carry around a camera all the time. This movie also built up to a scream filled climax, and we learn more of the back-story of the two sisters and why they are being tormented by this evil entity. Katie disappears into the night carrying her sister’s infant son Hunter as the movie draws to a close.
The third movie gives us a big slice of back-story as we travel back in time to when the sisters were children. Video back then was nowhere near what we have today, but the director again did an excellent job of having it all come together. There are very creepy shots of the camera, which was mounted on one of those oscillating fan bases, slowly panning back and forth across a static scene during the night. The tension mounted palpably as the audience waited for something scary to happen, and when it did no one in the theater could refrain from jumping and in many cases screaming. We find out that a satanic coven of witches is involved, and they made a deal with a demon. Though not as good as the first two movies, it was still packed with some good scares.
Finally, we come to the current movie, which I am sad to say wasn’t very good at all. We jump forward to the present and finally find out what happened with Katie and Hunter. We are kept in the dark for at least half of the movie, but once we do know what is going on the only real question remaining is who will live and die at the end. The scares come too slowly, and when they do you already know they are coming, so it isn’t very scary at all. I didn’t jump a single time during the movie, and the scene that caused the biggest “Boo!” moment in the rest of the audience was when the cat jumped out. This is an extremely tired horror movie cliché, and I’m calling it the moment that this series “Jumped the Shark”.
Apart from that, I felt that the story was getting tired. Now we have a satanic coven involved which takes away from the whole people plagued by a paranormal entity scare. The secret of a good scare is preying upon our inherit fear of the unknown. Less is more, as our imaginations can be far more terrifying than any cult of evil witches. The storyline seems played out, and we know that when Katie appears bad things are going to happen. There is one shot where the mom in the story (Alexondra Lee) is just standing there alone staring at the camera, and it looks exactly like she is waiting to be thrown up into the air. When it happened, I didn’t even blink, and actually thought she had it coming.
The action in this film is captured via the webcams in the laptops located all over the house. Halfway through the movie, no 
Another problem I had with the movie was the kids running around the house at night. I’ve raised five children and there is no way a six-year-old would get up in the middle of the night and start running around a pitch black house playing games. Sure, one of the kids was creepy and friends with a demon, so him I could understand, but the other kid? No way. I didn’t buy it, and that took away from the “suspension of disbelief” which is so critical to a successful horror film.
Has the series run its course? Probably. The film was boring, with tired scare tactics and a thin plotline at best. It’s time for a new director and new writers. The movie is making a lot of money so far, and Paranormal Activity 5 is already in the works. The problem is that the endings have gotten predictable, and the scares have become mundane, so how long can it last?
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