by Mike Hilty, Contributing Writer
I do not normally actively seek out horror movies. There’s something about being scared that I’m not a huge fan of. I’ve seen a fair amount of horror movies, so I can appreciate the genre, but unless it’s Halloween or someone else wants to watch a scary movie, it’s never going to be my first choice. So when the opportunity to review movies came up for October, I wanted to challenge myself. I knew if I ultimately wanted to step outside my comfort zone, I had to watch a horror movie. I doubled down, though, and decided to watch a horror franchise instead.
Enter the Paranormal Activity franchise…
I remember when the original Paranormal Activity came out with their viral marketing campaign, where people could demand it to come to a theater near you. I always thought that was a super creative way to market a movie. Little did they know it would spawn a whole franchise with four proper movies and two spin-offs. To make matters more interesting, found footage is not for me. I get a little queasy watching it because of all the shaky cam. The first time I saw The Blair Witch Project in theaters with my dad, he saw I was getting sick, gave me a cup, and said “if you’re going to spew, spew into this.” Thankfully, that calmed my nerves a little. But I generally steer clear of found footage. It’s the same reason I am no good at first person shooters. I was the guy at the sleepover who was terrible at the N64 classic GoldenEye.
I spent three nights, two trips to the library (that’s right, I had to actually go to a library to get the first three Paranormal Activity movies because it wasn’t available anywhere else), and 16 pages of notes (mainly filled with cursing, rolling of eyes, and my stream of consciousness as I watched all these movies) to get through these movies. I’m not sure I got the full effect, because I watched some at home at night. In addition, I didn’t watch any director’s cuts; I just watched the original theatrical cuts. Here’s my review of all the movies in anticipation of the seventh entry, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, coming out later this month.
Spoilers for all the Paranormal Activity movies…
Paranormal Activity (2005)
The O.G. that started it all. The original movie chronicles Katie (Katie Featherston) and Micah (Micah Sloat), whose house becomes the target for a paranormal entity. So here are some things I will give Paranormal Activity credit for. The viral marketing campaign was pretty great for them to do. It helped create momentum to give people a chance to watch it and feel the fear that others felt. I also appreciated that this isn’t an overly violent movie (at least until the end), and it genuinely tried to scare you with suspense, camera movement, and jump scares, instead of gore or violence. There were parts of this movie that scared me. Certain nights got to me, particularly the parts with the powder showing the footprints and the last few minutes where the demon drags Katie away. It also didn’t help that I was watching this when it was raining outside at night and it blew over my daughter’s little basketball hoop outside, which created an unnecessary jump scare. I also appreciated during the third act where there was an effort to move towards daytime horror. It’s funny how some of the technology evolves during the series as well. For this one, we are following a video camera (a big shoulder one) that is on a tripod in Katie and Micah’s room for most of the movie.
I do have a few gripes about this movie though: Micah is just a generally unlikeable character, and I wasn’t a huge fan of the running joke about making a sex tape. There was also no payoff with the demonologist only being mentioned, but also not coming to help (and he doesn’t come into play for the rest of the series either). It resisted the urge to use violence until the end, but it made sense for the story. I do not understand why anyone would use an Ouija board in this situation. Micah’s excuse for finally getting one is insane as well, and it illustrates that he’s not listening to Katie. She said not to buy one and he gets away with it on the technicality of it being “borrowed.” The film left some things unanswered about her family, but these come up again in future installments. If this had been a standalone movie, I wonder if they would have added more time to go over Katie’s family history more.
Grade: B-
Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)
Paranormal Activity 2 is a prequel that turns into a continuation of the first one. It takes place slightly before the first Paranormal Activity movie, then the end takes place right after the ending of the original. This time around, the film follows Kristi (Sprague Grayden) and Daniel (Seth Ginsberg), who recently moved into a new house, and their home is burglarized. In response to the incident, they install security cameras all over, which serves as the way they get footage of any strange events. Daniel’s daughter Ali also has a video camera that she splices in some footage as well. The sequel adds a new element that made me unsettled: a child being the subject of the activity. Kristi and Daniel’s young son Hunter is added into the mix early on, and the paranormal entity has its eyes set on the young child. You do find out that Kristi is related to Katie from the original one pretty early on, and it helps provide context that this isn’t a random occurrence; it was pre-determined because the family has been dealing with this for some time. This one ups the ante for the jump scares and the daytime horror in particular. The part where the security camera catches the incident in the kitchen was probably the scariest part of the movie for me. Adding kids to the mix ups the stakes as well since there’s more of a sense of danger because you don’t want anything happening to Ali (Molly Ephraim), and Hunter (William Juan Prieto) in particular, since he’s the one who would typically get haunted. The ending is sad since Katie then takes Hunter and leaves Ali to find both her parents dead. It’s an unsettling end, and it leaves the viewer wanting to know more because you want to see if Katie and Hunter are eventually found.
Grade: B+
Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)
We’re going full-on prequel to see what happened to Katie and Kristi as kids and how their childhood experiences shape the first two movies. This one takes place in the ’80s where Katie and Kristi’s mom Julie and her boyfriend Dennis record the house on old school tapes (this one made me feel old) after strange events happen. I did like the limitations of the ’80s technology and the creative ways the series keeps trying to find an excuse to film the house due to a paranormal issue. This is the movie where I began to lose interest for three main reasons. The first is the premise is starting to lose steam simply because it’s offering a lot more of the same in terms of jump scares, creepy events, and the same “Night # __” and the date to clue us in that paranormal activity will be upon us soon. The second reason is we’re rehashing a story of two characters where we already semi-know what their deal is. This is just filling in some gaps that doesn’t seem like anyone is really asking for. There’s also no stakes because we ultimately know that this will cause irreversible damage to them down the road that will ultimately lead to the first two movies. The final reason involves adding more elements to try and round out the story. You’ve heard the term “less is more,” right? This one adds a witch coven to the mix in order to show that there’s more to the story than just a demon. The kill count and the violence both start to increase as well. We’ve finally come full circle with the sex tape joke and some of the jump scares are pretty good (the ghost scene with the babysitter Lisa (Johanna Braddy) is a highlight for me). I thought this would have ended with the fire that was alluded to in the first two movies, but it ends with Katie and Kristi’s grandma being part of this coven and taking the kids in after their parents are killed. The coven is really what gets me to lose interest in this franchise.
Grade: C-
Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)
It’s a new family and a new technology for filming the house. This time we add the screen life with video chatting into the mix. I’m not sure it made sense how the screen was recording at night, but I’ve learned not to think too hard about these things. Kathryn Newton plays Alex and she’s going for it from an acting standpoint. Alex’s brother Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp) befriends Robbie (Brady Allen), who moved in across the street. Hunter and Katie have been missing for five years now and how they’re integrated into the fold is a bit of a stretch. I did appreciate that this tried to tie things together with the second movie, though. The end of this got me good, and the scene with Wyatt in the bathtub really got to me. As much as I’m not a huge fan of the coven element, the ending with all the witches was pretty spooky. The night where Wyatt goes into Alex’s room and levitates her was a great scene because it’s something semi-new. That’s the big issue with this sequel: rehashing similar elements from the previous installments. The violence starts to increase in later movies, and one of the elements I liked about the earlier installments was the scares, despite a lack of violence. Now that these are churning out more consistently, the franchise starts to suffer from expectations and fatigue.
Grade: C
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)
We’re trying something new, sort of? The Marked Ones follows Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) with his friends and family. Jesse is a recent high school graduate who gets a camera with graduation money and starts to film everything he can. His neighbor Ana (Gloria Sandoval) is into some weird stuff and suspects that something is amiss. When they go to explore her apartment downstairs, Jesse is “marked” by a paranormal entity and he starts to change into a demonic entity. If the Paranormal Activity franchise had a jump the shark moment, this is probably as close to one as you’re going to get. The series is starting to get stale at this point because we’re finding ways to spin off and do something new. In reality, though, it’s not spinning anything off and it keeps trying to expand to the other movies. Jesse in general didn’t offer a whole lot in terms of being a character. I wasn’t rooting for him at all, and he is unfortunately a pretty unlikable character. If this would have chronicled what happened to the other kid, Oscar (Carlos Pratts), I feel like I would have been more interested. This is also where I have an important question: why are the characters even filming this? Since we are just watching footage from a teenager’s camera, the shaky cam elements that I just can’t stand from found footage is more prevalent. More violence is becoming a staple now in the later movies. The end is more action packed, which I didn’t like. The very end sequence with Hector (Jorge Diaz) frustrated me a little because when you think this is semi-standalone from the series proper, it turns out the film makers can’t help themselves.
Grade: D+
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)
If The Marked Ones goes jump-the-shark, does this mean we’re one step closer to paranormal activity in space or something weirder? In Ghost Dimension, we follow Ryan (Chris J. Murray), whose daughter Leila (Ivy George) is becoming the target of a paranormal entity. Ryan, his wife Emily (Brit Shaw), his brother Mike (Dan Gill), who is visiting from Chicago after being dumped by his girlfriend, and their feng shui guru Skyler (Olivia Taylor Dudley) band together to try and save Leila. Spirit photography is at play with this one, as a special camera unknowingly ends up at Ryan and Emily’s house. This one is really going for something with the fancy special effects. I appreciated the practical effects in all the previous movies, but for this one it was cool to see through the kids’ eyes when they saw the demon. The ending confused me a little. Is this a cliffhanger? Does this mean the world is in trouble? I’ll be curious to see where the franchise goes from here. The only thing really new with this is the spirit photography piece and steering into the religious elements to help ward off the demons. This will fall into guilty pleasure for me, but I recognize it’s overall not a great movie.
Grade: C-
The series should be called Paranormal Activity: Diminishing Returns. This franchise had a lot of good graces built up with the first two, but a failure to expand beyond the general story, characters that are generally unlikeable clogging the screen time, and a very one note idea for the film caused the franchise to become stagnant. This is a property that could probably use a reboot at some point because there’s stuff to mine from the content. In order of personal preference, here’s my sort for the Paranormal Activity movies:
- Paranormal Activity 2
- Paranormal Activity 4
- Paranormal Activity
- Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
- Paranormal Activity 3
- Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
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