by Mike Hilty, Contributing Writer
When Paramount+ came out (or at least rebranded from CBS All Access), my wife and I got it for really one reason: Paw Patrol. My four-and-a-half-year-old loves Paw Patrol, and the movie was fast approaching, so we decided to bite the bullet and subscribe. We have most of our streaming services (we’re currently subscribed to eight of them, so much for saving money on cord cutting) cover all our bases should we need to watch anything. I sometimes forget that I have Paramount+ because I hardly ever use it for myself. When the opportunity to use it came up with the Paranormal Activity binge watch, I was grateful (and a little annoyed) that I had access to the final three movies in the franchise. I was also unaware that another one was not far down the pipe either. Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is exclusive to Paramount+ with no theatrical release (which, as much as I don’t want to judge a movie for that, automatically flew up a red flag), and based on how Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension ended, I was curious to see where this one would take the franchise.
After watching Next of Kin, this franchise has some hard questions it needs to ask itself.
Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin tells the story of Margot (Emily Bader), who recently got a match for someone who says is part of her biological family, and to whom she had no access to before. Margot agrees to film the story via a documentary crew consisting of cameraman Chris (Ronald Buck III) and sound guy/zip-off pants enthusiast Dale (Dan Lippert). The person who contacts her is named Samuel (Henry Ayres-Brown), who is part of an Amish community in New York. When the crew arrives at the farm, something sinister is clearly at play and something is clearly afoot with the community as a whole.
I had a few questions going into this movie:
- How will the events of the sixth movie affect the franchise moving forward?
- How will this movie connect to the franchise as a whole (if it even does)?
- How will the technology of the filming affect the story?
- How will the Next of Kin attempt to bring something new to the table?
- What’s the future hold after this one?
I will attempt to answer all of these questions, but probably not in any particular order. Before diving into the questions, some context is needed.
I will give the Paranormal Activity franchise credit for starting a modern horror franchise. As mentioned in my binge recap (not-so-subtle plug to go read that), I loved how Paranormal Activity was a franchise that largely relied on practical effects, strong marketing tactics, and general unease and creepiness without resorting too much to violence. In addition to that, the way the franchise has used various means of found footage and managed to try and keep the perspectives different was an innovative way to keep the perspective restrictive enough to where the audience has to keep their heads up to listen to subtle sounds or watch for subtle tricks. The franchise as a whole has a loose story and certain characters that tie it together. Although the continuity is appreciated, the story suffers a little in terms of what the franchise can do that will be new and refreshing for its fans and the audience as a whole.
Once they started with the spin off movies (The Marked Ones and The Ghost Dimension), there is definitely a noticeable change in terms of the stakes of the paranormal entity and its intentions (we go from terrorizing a family to a more global, end-of-the-world vibe), the evolution of the found footage element (standstill cameras offering a limited, but effective perspective versus full on camcorder being followed almost at all times), and the change from horror to horror/action (there’s a noticeable increase in violence and gore in the later entries). The first two movies are luckily connected to where it can be a coherent story, but everything else beyond that also suffers from sequel problems. The story starts to expand and add other elements that make the story more complicated than it needs to be. There’s also a problem with how much different can you do in terms of scaring the audience in new and creative ways.
Here’s what works for Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin: I found the initial premise interesting. Family has been a recurring theme of the franchise, so I found it fascinating that this was billed as a deeply personal story about Margot finding her biological family within the backdrop of a Paranormal Activity movie. The setting as a whole also worked for me. We are used to seeing things occur in a suburb or more urban setting with the rest of the series. In Next of Kin, however, we are in a more rural setting in the middle of nowhere. The use of the outdoor elements — particularly the use of snow — was also a nice change of pace. It kept me on the lookout to make sure there wasn’t something I missed. There is definitely a bump in quality of the filming with the enhanced technology. I found the use of professional cameras really cool, and I thought the use of a drone could add a fascinating element to how the filmmakers capture and potentially scare the audience (unfortunately the drone has a very limited use, which was disappointing). The use of a GoPro was also a great addition and provided a fresh perspective instead of relying on a shaky camera.
The trade of better quality does come at a price, though, as the overall substance of the movie as a whole is sacrificed and ultimately betrayed.
This is as close to a standalone entry into the franchise as we get. It doesn’t really connect to the other movies like I thought it would, nor does it make sense of the events of the sixth movie. I criticized some of the other movies for finding weird ways to connect the movies, particularly in the second half of the franchise. This, however, course-corrects in the opposite way by trying to have this stand on its own and expand the story beyond what the demon named Tobi is doing to Katie and her family from the original movies. The ramification of that is a disjointed and clunky movie where the story suffers by trying to introduce all these new characters and have the audience figure out story elements that don’t make sense and messes with the continuity of the original series. Speaking of the new characters, I was not a fan of any of the new characters especially by the middle of the story. I was not rooting for them to make it out of this, I didn’t connect with them, and they made strange choices that were frustrating at best and insanely idiotic at worse.
I think the biggest problem is for this to be labeled a Paranormal Activity movie, there is very little paranormal activity going on. The filmmakers resort to very cheap jump scares that rely almost exclusively on a loud noise startling you more than the actual scene on film. This is a lazy way to elicit a scare from the audience versus how the original Paranormal Activity movies did with more subtle and disturbing imagery. I’ll admit, I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to horror movies, but this did not scare me nearly as much as the original movies did. The genius of the first few movies was you couldn’t see what was going on so the audience fills in the gaps in their mind with explanations of how some events are happening. The paranormal events are few and far between and the end ultimately descends into a confusing, violent, gory mess (literally and figuratively) with a weird ending that rehashes the end of another film in the franchise. If the film isn’t doing anything new to scare us and the audience as a whole isn’t invested in this story and characters, what are we even doing at this point?
This leaves the final question to be answered: where does this franchise go from here? This feels like a franchise that has squeezed as much juice out the premise as it can and has expanded to the point where now the timelines and stories are muddled to the point where there needs to be some serious soul searching about what this franchise’s future looks like. This, to me, looks like two options can work in this case: use one to two more movies to try and wrap up most (if not all) the storylines that have been created so the prospect of salvaging what’s left here can be achieved, or abandon ship and reboot everything as a whole.
I will be curious to see where the franchise goes from here. I lost steam after Paranormal Activity 3, and it’s been diminishing returns ever since. This is the point in a franchise where, as a completionist for series or franchises, I would begrudgingly finish the movie while hating myself for sticking with something I’m no longer invested in. Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin ranks at the bottom of the franchise and might very well be Batman & Robin levels of killing a franchise for years to come.
Grade: D-
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