![]() ![]() Instead of a journey into fear, PA4 is a nostalgia trip - déjà boo! all over again. You go not to be scared but to remember the thrills you felt watching the first film. The movie is an October surprise without the surprise. That’s certainly the case with Paranormal Activity 4, which will lure about 5 million people to theaters this weekend. (READ: Corliss on the Paranormal phenomenon)Īs the series that challenged Saw, the previous pre-Halloween king, and quickly beheaded it, the PA franchise has stopped innovating and turned into a familiar theme-park-like attraction: the same reliable, recyclable experience, the same methods employed with the minutest variations. This year The Possession began the ghoul parade in late summer, Aug.31, and it has continued with a new haunted-house movie nearly every week. 21, now in its 22nd year), at kitsch museums (Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors) and in Hollywood’s fall schedule of pre-Halloween horror films. Not missing a trick, or a treat, the entertainment-industrial complex has extended a single fright night into an entire season, in theme parks (Universal Florida’s Halloween Horror Nights, which stretch over six weeks beginning Sept. Attending a Paranormal movie is now just that: a rite of fall, with predictable autumnal shivers, like a Halloween jaunt in, say, Alaska. PA and its two sequels have totted up a $576.6 million global gross on a production investment of about $8 million, or a $72 return on every dollar spent shooting.īut when you expect the shock - hear the tiptoeing, spot the car, see the same spooky door in another film - that’s merely a habit. Shot in a week in 2007 for $15,000 and finally released in 2009, it earned $193.4 million at theaters around the world. In so many ways, Oren Peli’s film proved that less is more. Ah, the pleasures of horror-movie subtlety: when the conventions of the genre are stripped to the bone and the scariest part is not the monster but the waiting. ![]() That last one, in the original Paranormal Activity, made movie audiences jump in tandem, as if ordered to by a gym teacher. Someone tiptoes up behind you and goes boo! A car zips out of a side street into your lane. It serves to continue a story that should have been resolved by this point, and offers little in comparison to the original movies.Follow shock to the system is an event. “Paranormal Activity 4” is a below average movie. Nelson, but it wasn’t the wind that locked your daughter in the garage and started the car on its own. I understand the need for the parents to doubt their daughters insistence that the house is haunted, but when faced with actual video proof the correct actions shouldn’t be to brush it off or assume she has some new technology and is trying to fool them. Its a stretch to accept that they would take in a complete stranger (with teenage daughter Alex being the only one who finds the situation weird) but their actions throughout the movie border on completely dumb. Nelson (Stephen Dunham and Alexondra Lee) are beyond believable with virtually everything that they do. While the boy (played by Brady Allen) displays very creepy tendencies, most of the time he’s just an annoying character. We understand and appreciate why Micah is filming in the original, and why security cameras are installed in “ Part 2.” With this entry, its jammed in, with more than a handful of scenes where it is completely ridiculous that one would be filming given the nature of the situation.Īlex’s parents take in an ornery neighbor kid after his mother is mysteriously hospitalized. That being said, for the first time since the start of the series, the found footage aspect feels forced. This time, excellently creepy scenes are depicted via Skype conversations between Alex and Ben, as well as some cool elements with an infrared video game system. I loved the aspects of the newer technology, an area that the entire series always seems to incorporate well. Alex has a younger brother, Wyatt, and a boyfriend named Ben (Matt Shively) who plays as the perfect comic relief character in the movie. The movie stars Kathryn Newton as Alex Nelson, a perfectly typical teenager who serves as a solid actress and a likable character, despite interference from her seemingly inept and unbelievable parents (more on that later). “Part 4” takes place 5 years after the events of where we left off – a brief introduction reminds us that Katie, now completely under the control of a demonic entity, has just abducted her nephew Hunter. ![]()
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