I appreciate the film’s sense of humour about itself – the fact that it refuses to take itself entirely too seriously. ![]() The performances are hardly revelatory, but they’re light and they’re entertaining. I also like the sense of humour that the two kids bring to the film, played rather well by Kathryn Newton and Matt Shively. We can’t help but stifle a cynical chuckle as the lead’s boyfriend assures her that he wasn’t just watching her sleep, but his computer records everything. For one thing, setting the film among the young YouTube, Twitter and Facebook generation helps rationalise the dependency on technology to document and record every waking second. That was certainly less believable than the existence of a sinister demonic force answering to the name “Toby.”įocusing on two teenagers actually allows for several interesting opportunities that make the film’s human characters a bit easier to stomach. Indeed, by the time the third film rolled around, it seemed almost incredible that not one male figure was more interested in his better half’s sanity than in making a nice home movie. It worked there due to novelty, but seeing the pattern repeat made the concept rather stale. The original film strained credibility in that regard, with Micah seeming like a self-centred tool. This is totally less sleazy than it looks. After all, the most unbelievable aspect of the first three films was the idea that the family had three selfish jackass patriarchs more concerned with documenting these bizarre experiences than caring for their family. The script actually makes a very clever decision to shift the film’s attention away from the parents at to two teenagers. It’s nice to open on a new cast of characters who we know aren’t burdened with decades of family history tied to demons and ghosts. (Although one of the twists is shrewd enough that I give it a bit of credit for execution.) The short prologue all but assures us that the movie will eventually pick up the threads of the first film, and it certainly does. So it’s great to see Paranormal Activity 4 at least open on an entirely new family. While the first film hinted at a twisted family back story, the sequels dwelt on it a little too much. It made the haunting seem less like something that could happen in any dark or strange house inhabited by any young couple, and instead made it very specific to this particular person. It removes the randomness and the brutality of the original haunting, creating the impression that the malignant force has a reason or motivation, and that it could be bargained or bartered with. Indeed, Paranormal Activity 3 was something of an origin story for the two female leads in Paranormal Activity and Paranormal Activity 2. The two sequels explored the family history a bit too much, to the point where the series became almost over-burdened with story. Part of the appeal of the original film was watching a couple deal with something that seemed genuinely otherworldly. ![]() The film does well to open on a new family instead of continuing to focus on the old tangled family tree. “He doesn’t like it when you film him,” a creepy child advises out leads at one point during the demon’s most forceful attack, perhaps retroactively explaining the ferocity of the creature’s attacks in the original trilogy. It’s a small suburban family at the mercy of some ethereal other-worldly force. While it’s nowhere near as innovative, clever or genuinely frightening as Paranormal Activity, Paranormal Activity 4 measures up reasonably well to the standard set by the sequels, ending up much stronger than Paranormal Activity 2, and about on-par with Paranor mal Activity 3.īy this point, we know what to expect from these films. Things definitely come off the rails towards the finalé, as the movie (and the series) become too burdened down with mythology and story – and the last third certainly becomes a little over-crowded and generic, threatening to collapse under its own weight as so many modern horrors do. ![]() It feels strange to talk about a movie featuring an ominous demon hunting a small suburban family in these terms, but there’s a surprisingly warm and endearing sense of humour to be found in the first two-thirds of the film. As far as horror franchises go, the Paranormal Activity series is still much more spry than most other long-running series, and there’s a certain charm to the opening hour of Paranormal Activity 4 that seem almost playful. ![]() I actually quite liked the opening set-up of Paranormal Activity 4.
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