Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)

An interesting thing happened during the trailers to Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones.  They abruptly stopped, the lights came on, and I thought there was either a problem with the projector or the theater was doing some kind of gag involving the movie.  I turn around to see a few security guards and the theater management asking everyone to have their IDs and ticket stubs out.  Apparently someone noticed that there were a lot more people in the theater than the amount of tickets they sold, so they knew that underage teens (this is an R-rated movie) had likely bought a ticket for another movie and then snuck in.  They escorted about 30 kids out.  I've seen a few people get kicked out of movies recently, but never to this extent.  I wonder if the theater chain is getting pressure from corporate or outside sources to cut down on allowing kids into R-rated movies.

Anyway, it's no secret I'm not a fan of the Paranormal Activity series.  I thought the first was one of the most overhyped, boring horror films I've ever seen.  It had little going for it outside of the found footage gimmick; nothing more than poorly written characters reacting to pots falling, the wind blowing doors shut, and sounds off-camera.  Terrifying!  By the third film, I thought the series had totally run out of steam.  At least with the fourth installment, the writing and acting improved and gave us some likeable characters.  The newest film continues on that course.

The Marked Ones gives us a new locale and family to follow.  Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) is celebrating his graduation from high school in Oxnard, CA.  Shortly after a party in his apartment complex, his downstairs neighbor, who many believed was a bruja, or witch, is shockingly killed by class valedictorian, Oscar (Carlos Pratts).  Jesse and his best friend Hector (Jorge Diaz) break into the victim's apartment and find various black magic paraphernalia.  The next morning Jesse finds a strange bite mark on his arm.  He then develops bizarre abilities and his behavior becomes increasingly erratic and violent.  Desperate to find what's happening to Jesse, Hector and their hot friend Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh) investigate and find that Jesse isn't the only person this has happened to.

One of the more fun aspects of the film was how Jesse experimented with his abilities.  They have fun with them at first, and it will remind many of the earlier parts of Chronicle.  There's creative use of the old electronic Simon memory game as a Ouija board that I thought was a clever twist.  As I mentioned earlier, the writing and dialog is an improvement over the first three films.  There's some very funny, and natural banter between Jesse, Hector and Marisol.  We don't learn much about them personally, but they aren't annoying.  They drink, smoke pot and try to get laid.  You know, the type of behavior you'd expect from kids their age.  As far as the cast goes, newcomer Andrew Jacobs did a good job and it's the kind of performance where you get that feeling he's got a bright future ahead of him.

Unfortunately, The Marked Ones is full of predictable jump scares that weren't remotely scary.  It was so obvious when one was going to happen, I would say to myself, "Cue someone jumping out of nowhere in 3..2..1!"  At this point, they need to be able to deliver more than cheap scares.  The whole formula of these films is stale.  You know they're going to end up in some house where witches ambush them and they can't get away.  The only question I had was were they at the house from the end of Paranormal 4 or Paranormal 3.  I'm pretty sure it was from Paranormal 3, but it could be the same house for all I know.  There is a really funny part during the climax that had me saying, "Finally!"  Unfortunately, it's short lived and falls back into the same crap from the others.

They're trying their best to link these stories together, but I'm at a loss what that the goal is.  It continues to be muddy to me.  That's really the issue with any film like this.  What are these demons/ghosts after?  They don't seem to want more than to mess with people and then occasionally kill those that dare investigate the weird events around them.  Seriously, it's been five movies now.  What's the end game?  Has anything been answered?

I don't know what it is, but I have a really strong urge to buy a GoPro after watching The Marked Ones.  Oh that's right, it's because most of the footage was filmed with either with a handheld or a GoPro.  Man, those GoPro cameras have sure gotten a lot of mileage in horror films, eh?  Seriously, it's a pretty useful piece of technology.

And I'm still dying to know who's actually been finding this footage...

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones might change things up slightly, and isn't quite as boring as the other installments, but it's still more of the same, predictable jump scares.  It doesn't provide any genuine chills and fails to haunt or leave any lasting impression.  I can only recommend this to existing fans of the series who want to stay up to speed, but I'd recommend fans of genuine horror to look elsewhere.

2 (out of 5) Death Stars

Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) - Movie Review

I think the real title for this movie should have been Paranormal Product Placement.  Then you could shorten it to PPP or P3.  When watching Paranormal Activity 4, I couldn't help but feel like I was watching an extended commercial for Microsoft Kinect.  Corona and Metro bottled water also make appearances.

The movie's prologue recalls the events at the end of PA2.  You see Katie (Katie Featherston) attacking her sister and stealing their son, Hunter.  It helps a little if you've seen the previous PA films, but ultimately it doesn't matter, as the movie makes less and less sense as it goes on.

We fast forward a few years, and are introduced to a new family.  The surprising thing is that you actually like this family, in particular Alex (Kathryn Newton) and her boyfriend Ben (Matt Shively).  They actually have some pretty funny banter between them, and it the first time I've actually cared anything for the characters in a PA movie.  That's actually the highlight of the film, and I was surprised at the humor in it.

Anyway, an unknown woman and weird child live across the street.  The woman is revealed later, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out who it's going to be.  The weird child, Robbie (Brady Allen), likes to randomly wander into their yard.  One night, the mystery woman is rushed off to the hospital, and the family agrees to watch Robbie while she's away.  While strange, Robbie initially is still kind of endearing.  As you'd expect though, weird things begin to happen.  To track this, Ben helps Alex setup laptops all around the house to record everything.  This is basically the film's excuse to have multiple cameras, but it also felt like a huge plot hole to me.  First, these cameras seemed to be recording 24 x 7, and didn't seem to be triggered by any kind of motion detection.  Do these computers have infinite hard drive space to be recording as much as they are?  Then I wondered why nobody else in the house, like the parents, ever noticed an unused computer and bothered to turn it off or shut the screen?  How many laptops does a family need anyway?  The producers of the film would like to thank Apple for all of the free laptops and iPhones used in the making of Paranormal Activity 4.

Early on, they would go back and look at the footage and notice some of the weird things happening.  However, later in the film they conveniently don't do this when even weirder things happen.  If they had, there would have been good reason to get out of the house or contact the authorities.

How come a movie with 'Activity' in the title features very little actual activity.  Once again we are treated to a seemingly endless number of shots of empty rooms or people sleeping.  Can you stand all of this activity?  It irritates me that most of the scares come out of long stretches of silence or nothing happening being broken up by a noise or something jumping around the screen. This movie uses a book, a cat, a shadow, and several other things all used as cheap jump scares. It even tries to scare you with abrupt editing.  The longer the movie goes on, the more the scares are telegraphed.  Anytime you see an extended shot of a room, you know they are only showing it to you because something is going to happen soon, so you're looking for it.  When it happens, there's no impact.  I found it all to be very lazy.

Whatever this thing is that's terrorizing them is kind of a jerk that just likes to annoy or inconvenience people.  You see things like littered toys, a basketball bouncing down the stairs, and a chair moving on it's own.  One of the few times something freaky happens to Alex, they setup the scene by telling you she took a sleeping pill, so now you know she won't wake up for what's about to happen.  If she doesn't wake up, she has nothing to fear or freak out about, and also has no reason to watch the footage the next day.  It's pointlessly messing with someone.

The conclusion of the film, which is basically a recall to PA3, is very abrupt.  It's just a few minutes of more cheap scares taken in night vision.  Based on what was setup in the last film, they could have explored that more here, but didn't take the opportunity.  There's a point in the plot where something is revealed that made absolutely no sense to me.  There's just no setup to what they are doing.  It really feels like writers Chad Feehan and Christopher Landon are making this up as they go along, and then realized didn't have an ending yet, so they just said, "Screw it.  Let's just throw as much stuff as we can at them in the last few minutes."

This still has the same issue that other found footage films have.  When shit hits the fan, why are you still filming?  Wouldn't you run like a normal person or put the camera down?  If you're filming on an iPhone, why aren't you calling 911 instead?  Plus, since when does an iPhone have a night vision option?  Who puts together all this 'found footage' anyway?  The footage is pretty strong evidence against the people in it, so are the authorities looking for them?  Are they that hard to find after so many years?  Okay, here I go again looking for this stuff to make sense when it's clearly not meant to.  Silly me.

I already hear they are going to make yet another one of these movies, and I can't imagine what it would be about.  I suppose it doesn't matter though, as I'm sure they'll make it for dirt cheap and it will make a huge profit.  This is probably going to sound condescending, and I generally don't like to insult the audience that likes a particular film (except for Twilight fans), but sitting in the theater made me realize who this franchise's audience is: young teens that haven't watched a lot of horror. This stuff can only be scary to people that just don't have a lot of experience with the genre. There's nothing about the scares in this film that are creative or inventive.  It's just more of the same cheap jump scares and loud noises that have been done a million times before.  But hey, who am I tell people they can't have fun with this?  I just wish they wouldn't, so they'd stop making them.

The directors of Paranormal Activity 3 (Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman) are back to direct this, and I still can't figure out what they are directing.  It's the same shots repeated in a loop featuring mostly bad acting.  Plus, I can't believe boring this film got the longer it went on.  It's paced terribly, and I'm shocked to find this is only 95 minutes.  I thought it was at least two hours long.  I couldn't stop yawning.

Paranormal Activity 4 is another weak entry in the series featuring the same lame jump scares, lack of activity and nonsensical plot.  The only redeeming thing is that you actually like some of the characters this time around.  Overall, it's just boring and stupid.  I advise you to skip it.  Go see Sinister if you haven't seen it yet.  That deserves your money more than Paranormal Activity 4 does.

1 (out of 5) Death Stars