The best thing, worst thing, and main thing about the latest found footage horror movie “Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones” in about the time it takes to watch the trailer. Hit the comments with your “Best Ever” thoughts and guesses!
REVIEW TEXT:
Really, another paranormal activity movie? Is it January already?
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“Paranormal Activity The Marked Ones” is the fifth instalment in the Paranormal Activity universe, that started 6 years ago and fully ushered in the “found footage” horror movie genre. This time we follow a latino family as they find new and completely manufactured ways of filming their own mysterious encounters. Now, of course the easy thing to do here, and it would save us all a lot of time, would be to ask a simple question. Did you enjoy the other Paranormal Activity movies? Yes? then welcome! No? Then run away. Run far, far away. But since you’re here, just for the sake of kicks lets break it down a bit.
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Let’s start with the good. The actings actually not that bad, which is surprising considering “found footage” acting isn’t exactly easy. There is a different way people act when they are aware of a camera that sometimes is hard to capture in a performance, but they do pretty well here. One thing that’s nice about that is it really helps the humor to land. I found myself smiling a lot more than usual, especially early on. I also enjoyed that this takes place in a Latino culture and away from the normal environment we usually see. Let’s even call it the best thing. It’s just nice to know that even in the Barrio demons possess people with the uncanny knack to always be pointing a camera at important supernatural events. And one more kinda good thing. I thought that the movie had a couple clever takes on the genre, one involving the old electronic game Simon, even if the end was a little too clever for its own good.
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Of course all of that does little to offset the fact that this genre of movie is just played out. You can just feel the entire audience rolling their eyes every time the scene goes silent to set us up for the big jump scare. And here’s the thing, when you know when and how these scares are coming, waiting for them isn’t called tension anymore, its called boredom. Of course the worst thing is the tedium of having to justify every single moment as to why somebody just happens to be filming the scene. It works ok for the first half when the movie is lighter, but once stuff starts going down, there is no way these people are hanging on to these cameras. Not to mention that they certainly wouldn’t be framing the pictures so well at the same time as screaming for their lives. You know what would work? Google Glass. Takes care of both problems. You’re wearing the camera so you wouldn’t think to drop it or turn it off, and your framing would always be what you see. My apologies if I just inadvertently created Paranormal Activity 6, I promise that was not my intent.
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At the end of the day, Paranormal Activity The Marked Ones is another Paranormal Activities movie, even the better than usual acting, and an interesting new environment can’t offset the ridiculousness of the now stale found footage gimmick. I’m going with a C-
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Thanks for checking out this Your Movie Friend review, stay tuned for this review’s “Best Ever” challenge here in bit but first, I’m going to put up some stuff you can click over in this area. If you’d like to subscribe, which I would much appreciate, you can do so by clicking the big gray subscribe button. Want to see more? You can click here to see a review for the military action flick “Lone Survivor” and this week also kicks off my Favorites of 2013 posts. This week I’m posting my Top 15 TV Shows of 2013. You can also Click the logo up here to go to yourmoviefriend.com where you can search by title for reviews. And finally this review’s “Best Ever” Challenge, where you name the best movie ever in a particular category and also try to identify my choice. What is the “the best found footage movie ever”. Just for purity’s sake the entire movie must be found footage. Mine involved a very memorable and humongous decapitation. Drop your own answer and a guess at mine in the comments and first person to guess mine gets a point! Thanks and don’t forget to subscribe!