"Psss"
"What?"
"You
know it's going to be October before we know."
"So?"
"So
we need to make another Paranormal movie. Do you think we still have time to do
it?"
"Of
course. It can't possibly take that long to come up with a story."
That story now moves to Nevada with a
new family that seemingly has nothing to do with the other movies. Most of the
movie centers on this family's teenage daughter, Alex (Kathryn Newton), and
young son Wyatt. Things get weird
for the family when the mother decides to take in the young boy, Robbie (Brady
Allen), from next door after his mom is taken to the hospital. Alex eventually
notices the paranormal activity, but too bad her parents prefer not to pay
attention to her until things hit the ceiling.
Sometimes when there are sequels people
complain that they just made the movie for money because it has little
cinematic value. This movie just might be the definition of that. Seriously, I
wrote the intro like that because that's what it seems like. They felt the need
to do another PA so they just whipped something together at the last minute.
This franchise is all about the scares
so let me complain about that first. You know that commercial showing all the
people jumping out of their seats? Well they must have been watching a
highlight reel from the previous movies because there is no scare in this movie
that tops any of the best scares from the previous movies.
The coolest thing they do is
introducing night vision from the Xbox in the living room. If the audience
looks closely enough, they can see things that aren't suppose to be there. The
problem with that is that it's cool, and not scary. The first few scares, which
are not ground breaking, come from the camera moving at the right time, and
from sources that aren't paranormal. There is one scare that I'm still not sure
how it happens involving a knife. I'm not going give it away, but I seriously
want to know what people think about the knife scene. The only part of the
movie that is remotely scary is the last say 10-15 minutes, but I'll get to
that shortly.
Moving onto my next complaint, which is
the storyline. I realize the movie is all about the scares, but the previous
movies at least have some kind of plot. This movie just moves too fast, and
leaves out too much detail. Part of the problem is introducing a family that
has nothing to do with the other movies. It doesn't make the audience really
care about these people. One of the most interesting characters is Alex's
boyfriend, Ben (Matt Shively). He’s certainly a character that the teenage
audience will relate to. The problem with him is that he provides a lot of
comedy, which again diminishes the scariness.
As far as taking in the random boy next
door, who does that? They make it clear that this family barely knows Katie
(Katie Featherston), so why would they take in her son? Alex does try to get her mother to explain how they got to the point of
taking in Robbie, but the mother doesn’t explain it well enough. Speaking of
things that people don’t do, who walks around their house filming everything?
In the other movies they use security cameras, or there is a decent explanation
to why things are being filmed. In this one, Alex is filming for no apparent
reason besides in the opening scene. She does Skype with Ben in some moments,
but still. And of course she has Ben set up more cameras, but they just stop reviewing the footage at one point so what's the point. Those are just a couple examples of the holes in this story.
Besides seeing if they could create any
new scares, I really wanted to know more about what Katie and Hunter have been
up to. Well audiences may never know because they end up spending more time on
the family than giving the audience any concrete information about what mother and son have been up to. Most of the investigation is spent of trying to figure out why
Robbie is so strange. At one point, Alex does the typically Internet search for
information, but since she can't pronounce what she reads, it totally distracts
from figuring out what she’s talking about. There is a little twist in the
story, which I will give them credit for cause I didn't see it coming. However,
it just opens up so many more questions that I'm not even sure they can answer.
Now back to the last 10-15 minutes,
which are the only moments that had my full attention. I won't get too
specific, but say that Katie finally gets involved. It’s still a little creepy
anytime they show her because you remember what she is capable of doing.
Finally there are hints of expanding on the ideas from the end of part 3, but
just no explanation along with it. They do take things, if you will, to the
next level. However it almost feels like they did the whole movie hoping that
final shot would shock audiences into liking the movie. It’s somewhat shocking,
but again opens up so many more questions.
And will audiences ever get answers to
those questions? Well maybe in part 5. Yes, I said part 5. If you stay to the
end of a very quiet credits sequence, there is a bonus scene letting you know
this isn’t over… really! Seriously, when they said they were doing a fourth
part, I really wished they would’ve started a new storyline like American
Horror Story is doing in their second season. Instead, they are just going to
drag this on. I was all right with the decision to show where Katie took
Hunter, but they ruin it with the lack of details about how she got to this
point.
Paranormal Activity 1 started off well,
but pissed me off by the end. To this day, I’m still not sure if I like
Paranormal Activity 2 or Paranormal Activity 3 better, but I did enjoy them. Paranormal Activity 4
is clearly the worst movie in this franchise. The scares are nowhere near the
best scares in the previous movies. There are too many holes in this storyline,
which creates a family that audiences won’t care enough about. And they just don’t give audiences enough new details
tying this movie in with the others. No surprise here, I give this movie 1 pool of blood.
HorrO
