Enough already!
The H-Bomb: I’m just going to cut right to it, here, Paranormal Activity 4 is what you get when you take a movie franchise that is fueled only by one single idea, one single gimmick, and just run it completely into the ground. It starts to feed off itself, cannibalize itself, just recycling the same old shit until it stops being a valid continuation of the original film, and just becomes a half-assed knock off, instead.
So it went with the Saw films, so it goes for Paranormal Activity. In the beginning, I was a fan, as the first film is one of the very, very few horror movies to actually scare me as an adult. It was a simple concept, a young couple videotaping their encounters with a demonic entity, who like any demonic entity, is tormenting and terrorizing them for the lulz. While the story was basic, it was also chocked full of moments that were truly unnerving, and was overall just creepy as hell. A rare example of a found footage flick that actually worked.
Then came the inevitable sequel that did essentially the same thing, only not nearly as effectively. It expanded on the back story a bit, but that aside, it was more or less an inferior repeat of the first movie. With the third film, the same exact formula was followed, and it was starting to get pretty damn tired. When I finished with Paranormal Activity 3, I figured they stretched this one concept as far as it could be stretched, and any movies after this will just be contrived rehashes of what came before.
And having now sat through all 95 minutes of Paranormal Activity 4, I can say emphatically, I was right, Goddamn it! This fourth installment, which thankfully I passed up in theaters, brings absolutely nothing new to the table, and gives us nothing we haven’t already seen. Just more things going bump in the night, more objects being moved by themselves, more possessed people acting oddly… more of the fucking same. Except this time, none of it is scary. Not in the slightest.
It starts with a recap of the earlier films, where possessed Katie Featherston kills her boyfriend, her sister’s husband, her sister, and disappears with her sister’s baby. Some six years pass, we are now in a nice, quiet Nevada suburb, where we meet our hero, an obnoxious bubble-headed blonde teenybopper, who, for no apparent reason, videotapes every damn thing that happens in her life. Recently, a single “mother” and her six-year-old “son” moved into the house across the street from her. Would I really be spoiling anything if I told you who these two really are? Anyhow, the “mother” is never around, and the “son” is… weird.
How is this little boy weird? Well, aside from looking like Damien from The Omen, he’s very quiet, he tends to suddenly appear in places, and has a habit of standing in a single spot and staring off blankly. Little Miss Teenybopper is particularly disconcerted when she’s told that the boy’s mother was injured in an accident and has to go to the hospital, and that he’s going to come stay over at her house. Soon after his arrival, the typical paranormal shit, the kind we’ve come to expect, starts happening.
Little Miss Teenybopper is convinced that this brat has “brought something into the house,” but her parents, who are your average, dense-headed horror movie parents, will hear none of it, despite chandeliers falling from ceilings and other such abnormalities. The only person who does believe her is her grinning, dumb-ass baboon of a boyfriend, and the two of them concoct a plan using all the cameras on every computer in the house (conveniently, there’s a computer in practically every room), to try and catch some supernatural shit. From there, a Paranormal Activity movie ensues…
And that, dear readers, is something I really can’t stress enough. You have seen this movie done before, and done way, way, way better. Where there was once genuine creepiness and tension, there is only boring padding, unimaginative plotting, and exceptionally bad acting (even by this series’ standards). And did I say boring? I’m sorry, what I meant to say was FUCKING BORING. Endless sequences of us looking into empty rooms, waiting for something, anything, to happen. Sadly, with the exception of the occasional jump scare, nothing really does. Now, as you know, I normally hate jump scares, but in this case, I actually welcomed them, because this time they were the only things keeping me awake. I can only imagine, if Princess Coppola ever directed a horror movie, it would be something like this… I shudder at the thought.
In all seriousness, though, Paranormal Craptivity 4 serves as undeniable proof that there is nowhere new for this series to go, nothing new to be added to it, and, aside from nefarious cash-grab motives on the part of the studio, no damn reason for any more of these movies to be made. There is certainly no reason for you to see this, or any future installments that may (and most likely will) come along. Your time would be better spent re-watching the original, because all the real scares were squeezed out of this cash cow about two movies ago, and now the time has come to put it out to pasture.
