Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021)

When the Paranormal Activity movies seemingly came to an end in 2015, part of me hoped that the franchise would stay dead and buried. As much as I enjoyed the first three, the later sequels were so unbearably bad that the whole thing just stopped being fun to watch. And I don't think I'm the only one that felt that way, considering the continually diminishing box office returns of each successive entry into the series.

You can't always get what you want, however. Six years after The Ghost Dimension closed the book on on Toby the demon's found footage adventures, the Paranormal Activity name has been resurrected with a movie released exclusively to the Paramount+ streaming service. And truth be told, I'd have had no idea this new chapter, subtitled Next of Kin, was even being released at all if I hadn't seen someone mention it on Twitter this morning. I haven't seen that first commercial or advertisement or anything for it. So between that and my displeasure with what the franchise turned into over time, I can't say I'm actually really excited for it. But what the heck, it's the spooky season, after all. So why don't we check it out and hope for the best?

The movie centers around Margot (Emily Bader), a young woman from Arizona who was abandoned by her mother when she was a baby. She's spent much of her life wondering about her biological family she's never known, wondering why her mother gave her up, and has spent much of her life searching for answers. She eventually makes some progress, however, when she's contacted by Samuel Bailer (Henry Ayers-Brown), who has recently left the Amish community he grew up in. Samuel discovered that Margot is his cousin through an online DNA testing service and offers to take her to his old community so that she can finally meet her biological family.

Accompanied by cameraman Chris (Roland Buck III) and sound guy Dale (Dan Lippert) so that she can document her search for her past, Margot travels to rural New York and is introduced to Jacob (Tom Nowicki), the Bailer family patriarch and her biological grandfather. Jacob offers them a room for a few days, and while Chris and Dale try capturing some of the local flavor, Margot goes off in search of answers for questions she's had all her life. But the deeper she digs, the closer she comes to learning that some mysteries should stay unsolved.

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is not a particularly good movie. It takes cues not just from the past movies in the series with the occasional cheap jump scare, but from the horror flicks released by A24 in recent years. Movies like Robert Eggers' The Witch or Ari Aster's Hereditary and Midsommar, flicks that are less dependent on jump scares and more focused on building an esoteric sense of dread. (And cults, can't forget the cults.) The big difference is that Next of Kin isn't nearly as good as those movies. It isn't even as good as the previous movies in its own franchise. Any effective scares to be found are few and far between, and the rest is nothing that hasn't been seen in a hundred other horror movies. It doesn't even bring anything new to this franchise beyond changing the setting from suburban California to a farm in New York. It's a dull, ultimately pointless movie that's only worth watching if you've run out of any other scary movies to watch this Halloween weekend.

Director William Eubank doesn't really do much to garner any sort of enthusiasm, or suspense, or any sort of reaction at all from the audience. I'm not even really sure Eubank knew what kind of movie he really wanted to make. There's a ton of odd editing choices, a handful of scenes (especially during the climax) that suddenly go into slow motion for a few seconds, and even a bit near the end of the movie that looks like it was shot traditionally instead of in the handheld "found footage" style.

I can't emphasize that last part enough, either. The movie already looks really slick thanks to it being established that the characters are using high end cameras instead of consumer grade camcorders like in the other movies, but there are times where the "found footage" concept is betrayed with camera angles that they couldn't possibly have gotten had the cast been shooting it themselves like the cast would have you believe. That's jarring enough, but when we get to one sequence near the end of the movie where nobody is holding a camera (as far as I could tell, anyway) and things are still shot perfectly for about sixty seconds, it takes me right out of the movie. I can forgive Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon and [REC] 3 for pivoting from found footage to traditional filmmaking halfway through because they actually address it. But here's it's painfully out of place and makes Eubank look lazy.

He isn't helped by the lackluster script, either. Writer Christopher Landon has worked on four of the movies in the series, so you'd think he could come up with something, anything, to shake things up. If you're gonna reboot the franchise, give us something fresh. But nope, he doesn't. Outside of the change in setting I've already mentioned, Landon doesn't give us anything new. The characters are either boring or forgettable (or both), with only Dale the sound guy having anything even remotely resembling a personality.

There's also very little time given to building any sort of nuance or depth to the villains' master plan. It just goes from Margot and Chris discovering some a few strange clues and saying "huh, this is kinda weird," some more clues that prompt a "this is really weird" reaction from Margot, and then we immediately run into the climax with no real build toward anything outside of one or two throwaway lines about what's happening as we're running at 100 miles an hour towards the conclusion. Combining this with a predictable open ending, you get the feeling that Landon just figured he'd give us the bare minimum and fill in the blanks if he has to write a sequel rather than giving us a fully fleshed-out story.

And then there's the cast, who are just as forgettable as everything else in Next of Kin. Dan Lippert has a few fun moments as the movie's comic relief, and that's the best thing I can really say about anybody. Emily Bader does an okay enough job despite her character having practically no depth whatsoever, and the vibe I got from Tom Nowicki was that they wish they could've hired Clancy Brown to play the role instead, and that's about all I really have to say about the cast. They're all just kinda there.

If you've seen literally any of the other Paranormal Activity movies, even the unofficial Japanese spinoff or the Asylum's ripoff, you've seen Next of Kin too. There's absolutely nothing here that improves or builds upon the same old formula that was worn out when the last movie came out in 2015, nothing that reinvents the series or makes this particular one worth watching. It seems appropriate that this went directly to a streaming app without much fanfare, because it's exactly the kind of movie that would have gone straight to video and faded into obscurity while collecting dust on a shelf at Blockbuster ten years ago. If you're desperate to watch any scary movie, give this a watch, I guess. But take my word for it, you're not missing anything if you don't.

Final Rating: **

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)

Nobody could have possibly expected Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity would have been such a huge hit after Paramount Pictures plucked it from film festival obscurity and released it nationwide in the fall of 2009. It grossed nearly 200 million dollars and spawned a number of sequels, a Japanese spinoff, and a mockbuster from The Asylum while practically killing the Saw franchise in one fell swoop. But like many franchises before it, the Paranormal Activity saga started running out of steam after a while. As much as I enjoyed the first three, I was ultimately burned by the tremendously disappointing fourth and fifth chapters.

With the release of a sixth chapter in the form of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, I find myself drawn to it not by any real desire to see the progression of the story or to have any unresolved questions answered, but by a feeling that I've seen all the other ones, so I'd might as well keep going. Besides, how often does one get to see a found footage movie in 3D? Outside of that fleeting possibility, however, The Ghost Dimension just isn't worth bothering with.

Christmas is fast approaching, and Ryan (Chris J. Murray) and Emily Fleege (Brit Shaw) are preparing for the holiday season in the new home in suburban California with their daughter Leila (Ivy George). As Ryan and his brother Mike (Dan Gill) decorate the house, the pair finds a stack of decades-old VHS tapes and an oversized video camera. The tapes depict young Katie (Chloe Csengery) and Kristi (Jessica Tylor Brown) from the previous movies being indoctrinated into a cult, while Ryan notices that the camera is picking up strange things around the house that are invisible to the naked eye, quickly realizing that it was custom built to be capable of spectral photography.

That'll come in really handy, as a series of strange events start happening around the house. Each incident seems oddly focused on Leila, whose behavior grows more and more strange with each passing day. Ryan sets up a video surveillance system to capture these occurrences in conjunction with his investigation into the tapes of Katie and Kristi. It quickly becomes evident that the demon we've come to know as "Toby" is in their house and has nefarious plans for Leila.

Wow. Just... wow. I don't know where to even begin describing just how disappointing this movie is. And that's really saying something, considering I wasn't expecting much to start with. The movie is painfully dull, the plot is nonsensical, the acting is mediocre at best, and as I sat in that theater watching, all I could think during the entire movie is that I wanted to stupid thing to hurry up and end so I could go home. It might not be as frustrating to watch as The Gallows, but Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension is almost as lame.

Gregory Plotkin makes his directorial debut here, and his efforts are poor, poor, poor. I say that because Plotkin violates what I consider to be the cardinal rule of the horror genre: The Ghost Dimension is not scary at all. There is nothing frightening, no suspense to be had. The scene where Toby chases Ryan and Mike into the kitchen comes close to mustering up a little tension, but it's dashed away almost immediately by a character making a stupid joke and the fact that the scene just stops. The chase has no payoff, no moment where Ryan and Mike barely get away and Toby is briefly repelled. It just cuts to the next scene like nothing happened. Even the token "boo!" jump scares are ineffective, serving only as an annoyance because it feels like the movie is suddenly shouting at the audience instead of trying to scare them. Throw in some of the most laughably bad CGI this side of the ending of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and you've got a horror movie that was doomed for failure from the start.

Plotkin doesn't even try making the franchise's transition into 3D worthwhile. The majority of the movie is actually in 2D, believe it or not. You can take off the glasses for long stretches of the movie and not feel like you're missing anything. Only a few brief instances of depth come from the bits and pieces being shot from the spectral camera. And even then, the 3D is very rarely ever used well. The franchise was built on a very angry demon throwing around everything it can get its hands on. Hell, the most famous moment of the very first movie (and arguably the trademark moment of the whole franchise) was Micah Sloat getting thrown at the camera at full force. That would make you think that a jump to 3D would be a perfect fit, right? But nope, The Ghost Dimension is actually relatively tame by comparison to the other movies in the franchise. There are one or two big moments, but outside of those, not a lot happens and the 3D goes underutilized for the most part.

Plotkin's direction may be underwhelming, but he isn't helped by the script, credited to Jason Harry Pagan, Andrew Deutshman, Adam Robite, and Gavin Heffernan. For starters, I am genuinely surprised that it took four people to write this movie. It really needed that many people to come up with this piece of crap? Did they each write their own script, then lump them all together in one great big pile? Was there some kind of Writer's Guild mandate that said they had to credit so many people? But with that many names attached to the script, I'm astounded that they couldn't collectively come up with something worthwhile.

I can overlook the movie featuring stupid and unlikable characters since that's actually par for the course with the Paranormal Activity movies, but I can't get over just how abysmal the story is. It's all over the place, as if it were having a panic attack brought on by the vague mess that is the franchise's mythology. None of it makes any sense, and some parts actually seem contradictory to the point that I think I'd honestly have to sit down and come up with some kind of flow chart to make heads or tails of any of it.

The acting suffers too, with Chris J. Murray only really standing out from the rest. The majority of the cast are just kinda there, going through the motions, while I was actually upset that Toby didn't kill Dan Gill's character early into the movie. Gill is annoying as the movie's token comic relief, a clichéd character that I'm getting tired of seeing in movies like this.

I think it's ironic that Paranormal Activity dethroned Saw as the horror franchise du jour. Both began with strong first chapters, their sequels starting out good too. But each franchise started going downhill from a creative standpoint starting with their fourth respective chapters, finally coming to an end with a so-called "final chapter" released in 3D. And much like Saw 3D, I walked out of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension asking myself, "Is this it? Is this really the way they wanted to end these movies if this really is the last one?"

If The Ghost Dimension really is the end, then it's a really lame note for the franchise to go out on. I'm stunned by just how genuinely boring and ho-hum this movie is; the majority of it feels like it's just doing a half-assed copy of things we saw done better in the first five movies. Hell, that forgettable Japanese spinoff was better than this. And that's the really disappointing part; the Paranormal Activity movies got off to such a promising start and ended up here. The movie's tagline is "for the first time, you will see the activity," but you know what? I wish I hadn't.

Final Rating: *½

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)

For the longest time, it seemed like The Blair Witch Project was the standard bearer for the "found footage" style of filmmaking. Even when the style really took off a few years ago in the wake of movies like Cloverfield, it was that cheap little indie flick that a lot of people thought of whenever the topic of found footage movies came up.

That is until 2009, when Paramount Pictures picked up and released Paranormal Activity to theaters nationwide after a successful run touring the film festival circuit. The movie was a huge hit, spawned sequel after sequel in rapid succession, and arguably helped to kill the Saw franchise. But after four consecutive Halloween weekends saw a release of a new entry in the franchise in some form or fashion, the year 2013 passed without one. However, now that 2014 has arrived, a new Paranormal Activity movie has also arrived with it in the form of what's being called a spinoff to the franchise. After the disappointment that was the fourth movie, I went into Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones expecting the worst but hoping for the best. And while it was far from the best chapter in the series, it still had its moments.

The movie quickly introduces us to Jesse (Andrew Jacobs), a recent high school graduate with his whole life ahead of him. But with no real immediate direction to travel in, he's content to spend all day goofing off with his best friend Hector (Jorge Diaz), pulling pranks on one another and capturing it and their day-to-day lives with Hector's ever-present camcorder. But things go from fun to frightening when their camera accidentally captures an old lady in a neighboring apartment in the midst of a ritual conjuring some serious black magic.

When word comes a few days later that the old lady has been murdered, a curious Jesse and Hector sneak into her apartment and find evidence that lends credence to their belief that their recently deceased neighbor was a witch. Jesse awakens the next morning with a bloody bite mark on his forearm, but the horror is tempered when he discovers that he's developed what appear to be superpowers. He tosses bullies across a parking lot with his bare hands, throws himself backwards to find himself levitating just above the ground, and defies gravity by jumping a skateboard over a standing Hector's head.

This comes with a price, however. Jesse quickly becomes distant and quick to anger, refusing to speak to Hector and attacking another boy for simply having a polite conversation with a mutual acquaintance. A deeper investigation soon makes it apparent that Jesse has been cursed, and that he'll get far worse before he gets better.

I had been led to believe that this would be the movie that would redefine and reshape the Paranormal Activity franchise. The handful of reviews I'd read implied that The Marked Ones would blow the socks off the fans who'd stood by the series. But it turns out I'd basically read a whole bunch of overblown hyperbole. I won't say the movie is actively bad, but it's just kinda there. It has its ups and downs like most movies, yet it doesn't really do much to make itself better than any of the other Paranormal Activity movies. Outside of a handful of references to the earlier movies and the crazy ending, it honestly could have been just another random mediocre found footage movie that would have otherwise flown under the radar.

The movie was written and directed by Christopher Landon, who is no stranger to the franchise, having written all of the other sequels beginning with Paranormal Activity 2. But for someone so heavily involved with the evolution of this series, The Marked Ones comes across like he was just throwing things at the wall to see what would stick. It was as if he was unsure of what he wanted to do with the movie. I understand that Landon might want to shake things up after the disappointment that was the fourth movie, but he takes it in a really weird direction. Landon moves away from the "haunted house" vibe of the first four movies and instead gives us what would happen if you combined Chronicle with demonic possession. The whole "being cursed gives Jesse superpowers" thing is interesting, I'll give it that, but Landon handles it awkwardly. It feels clunky and forced, and doesn't add a whole lot to the movie other than to imply that something weird is happening to Jesse. And honestly, that's something that could have been done so much better.

And in moving away from the "haunted house" format, Landon also moves away from the franchise's typical formula by eschewing slow-burning fear for cheap jump scare after cheap jump scare. There's not really any suspense, no feeling of dread brought on by a lurking, invisible menace. It's just stuff leaping into frame and yelling "boo!" over and over and over until it becomes monotonous. These moments have their place in horror movies and I'm not opposed to them, but if that's all there is, they lose their punch after a while. Some of the scares in The Marked Ones are good, but the spooky feeling from the other movies is barely here at all.

And while I'll applaud Landon's efforts to deepen the franchise's mythology, it's really just a mess. This is the first entry in the franchise in which Katie or her nephew Hunter aren't the focus of the movie in some form or fashion, which paves the way for Landon to investigate the whole evil cult thing that's been building from the other sequels. At least, that's what you'd think. Even when they have characters come in solely to dump a whole bunch of exposition on us, we never really feel like much is learned. For every question from the earlier movies that it might answer, it just raises twenty more. It's like Landon wanted to straighten some things out while still leaving the movie's mythology confusing enough that it would draw people into the next Paranormal Activity sequel to see if that one would make any sense.

At least the movie's cast is relatively strong. While much of the supporting cast isn't all that really memorable, they all play their parts as well as they can. The movie belongs to Andrew Jacobs and Jorge Diaz, though. Diaz is funny in his role as the protagonist's sidekick and comic relief, while Jacobs is likable, charismatic, and sympathetic all at once. Despite how crazy and borderline silly the movie gets at times, Jacobs remains relatively consistent. He's good enough that you can't help but worry for Jesse and his friends during all the awful stuff that plagues them. He also proves to be pretty scary too, his increasingly cold demeanor becoming more and more off-putting as the movie goes on. It's a good performance that really makes the movie a little bit better.

Unfortunately, the movie as a whole is still kinda mediocre. There are some parts of the movie that are genuinely fun and some really good scares to be found. It's a definite step up from the fourth movie, at the very least. But The Marked Ones is still honestly one of the weaker entries in the Paranormal Activity saga. The elements that work in the movie's favor are bogged down by the amount of stuff that just plain doesn't work. It's a movie that could have turned the whole franchise on its ear, but ultimately stumbled over its own feet. The next Paranormal Activity movie is apparently still in the works and looks to be released at the end of October. Assuming that holds true, we've got a ten-month wait to see just where the story will go from here. I'm actually genuinely curious to see it, just to see if any lessons have been learned from two "meh" sequels in a row. But then we'll see this Halloween, won't we?

Final Rating: **½

Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

I might as well come right out and lay all my cards out on the table from the start: I'm a fan of the Paranormal Activity movies. Yeah, the positive reviews I've given each chapter so far might be proof enough of that. But I'll admit that every Halloween, I await with baited breath each new entry into the "found footage" saga that killed the Saw franchise.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before a Paranormal Activity movie left me feeling disappointed. And that time is unfortunately now, because Paranormal Activity 4 was a tremendous letdown. The movie is almost like a parody of the franchise, or the big-budget studio equivalent of something The Asylum would do. And I hate saying that too, because I'm genuinely a fan of these movies. But if this one is any indication, the franchise has finally run out of gas.

Instead of following in the footsteps of the other sequels, this one is a legit sequel instead of a prequel. It picks up five years after the first two, taking us to the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nevada. We're quickly introduced to Alex Nelson (Kathryn Newton), a plucky 15-year-old girl who seemingly has everything going for her. Things start getting a little odd for her, however, when her parents agree to look after their neighbor's son ― an odd little boy named Robbie (Brady Allen) ― for a few days while Robbie's mother deals with a medical emergency.

While Robbie quickly makes friends with Alex's little brother Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp), Alex begins noticing strange disturbances around the house at night. She enlists her boyfriend Ben (Matt Shively) with the task of installing hidden webcams in different parts of the house, hoping to catch some evidence of these weird happenings. But over the course of the next month, it becomes apparent that not only has something supernatural moved into the Nelson home, but it seems fixated on Robbie and Wyatt.

I wanted to like Paranormal Activity 4. I really did. I wanted to walk out of that theater singing its praises, to write this review and tell you how awesome it is. But the movie's not awesome. It's not even good. Truth be told, the movie is just plain bad. I'd heard a lot of negative things about it beforehand, but I was shocked by just how little effort was put into it. Could anyone involved with this thing be bothered to care? Because it sure as hell didn't look like it if they did!

The brains behind this steaming pile are Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the filmmaking duo that had previously directed Paranormal Activity 3. But while I thought their work on that particular movie was great, their work here is surprisingly disappointing. It's like the producers hired two completely different people that coincidentally had the same names. There's no suspense to be had, no tension or even scares. Long stretches of the movie pass by where nothing happens. And that's really the movie's worst crime: it's boring.

Joost and Schulman at least try for some of the genre's stereotypical cheap jump scares. But not only are they not scary (more of a startle than a scare), but they're really cheap. They actually try to scare us by using scene transitions and bad editing! A character will walk into a closet for a few seconds, and BOOM! She's suddenly back in the center of the room. Some people sit on one side of the kitchen, and BANG! The refrigerator door is suddenly in our faces while someone rummages around for a snack. It's sub-amateur horror filmmaking, the kind of crap that makes it seem like Joost and Schulman wanted to parody genre tropes and clichés but were too lazy to care.

The script also suffers from an almost offensive level of stupidity. Written by Christopher Landon (himself a veteran of the Paranormal Activity franchise, having written the second and third movies), the script is riddled with plot holes and questionable choices by its characters. Take, for example, the fact that nobody can be bothered to actually watch the footage that's being recorded. The cameras even being there at all are only acknowledged a handful of times, and watching them is only referenced twice near the beginning and once at the end. That's it. If I suspected I lived in a haunted house and set up a bunch of cameras in my house to prove it, I'd be glued to the screen watching the footage all the time.

They'd even captured two specific instances of the ghost proactively messing with Alex, during one of which she was trapped in the garage and almost killed. But is it ever referenced? Not once. Alex doesn't even try to showing it to her parents to defend herself when they confront her about why she felt compelled to crash the car through the garage door. Why even record all this footage at all if you're not going to bother watching or even referencing it? You might as well just have made a regular movie instead of using the "found footage" technique.

It doesn't help that Landon doesn't add anything at all to the mysterious mythology of the franchise. That weird scene after the credits makes no sense beyond being a blatant setup for a fifth movie, and the movie's twist regarding what happened to baby Hunter after the end of the second movie only raises a million more questions. I don't want to spoil it, but I will point out that the twist makes even less sense than the post-credits sequence. It's a confusing turn of events that made me feel like somebody edited out any sort of explanations the movie might have had. We don't know anything more about the mythology than we did at the end of the third movie, and it makes the twist come off as being there for the sake of throwing off the audience and giving them something to do in a future sequel.

At least this movie has some decent acting going for it. I thought Matt Shively provided some funny moments, basically playing a younger, less-douchey version of Micah from the first movie. He's outshined, however, by two other members of the cast. One is Brady Allen, whose turn as the weird neighbor kid is surprisingly good. Allen is creepy and off-putting, bringing a very subtle air of menace to the character. He's quite convincing, and I totally bought what he was bringing to the table.

But the real star of the show is Kathryn Newton. I've never seen her in any other movies, but I was impressed by how well Newton handled herself here. She's absolutely fantastic and had me convinced from the start. I totally bought that she was going through all this. And while the character has the occasional dumb moments (why aren't you actually showing anyone what you've recorded?), Newton plays the role with intelligence and aplomb. It's just a shame that the movie isn't as good as she is.

I'm still in shock over how much of a letdown this movie was. Remember how I thought V/H/S was just okay? It's a million miles ahead of Paranormal Activity 4. It's like they couldn't come up with anything but were stuck meeting a release date, so they slapped this thing together at the last minute. The movie will make a bunch of money and a fifth Paranormal Activity is probably a safe bet. But that doesn't stop the fourth one from getting my hopes up and then dashing them away. At least the first three are still pretty good, right?

Final Rating: *½

Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

Found footage movies are rather polarizing, more so than other styles within in the horror genre. This is especially evident in the very successful ones; I know people who to this day will still argue whether or not The Blair Witch Project was good or bad. The same can be said for more recent fare like the Paranormal Activity movies.

When Paramount Pictures gave the first Paranormal Activity a wide theatrical release after its two-year stint on the film festival circuit, it was an unexpected hit. It was so successful, in fact, that one could argue that it's what killed the Saw franchise, its Halloween weekend competition.

But it's been the subject of a lot of heated debates since then. One side argues that the bulk of the movie is just some douchebag and his freaked-out girlfriend sitting around waiting for something to happen. The other argues that it's a suspenseful haunted house story that did the best it could with limited means. What do I think? I personally thought that both it and the sequel that followed it last year were, at the very least, really effective in establishing a dreadful, spooky atmosphere with some genuine scares.

In any event, the movies still proved to be financially successful and found an audience who actually enjoyed them. And that's what leads us to Paranormal Activity 3. Seemingly having fully supplanted Saw as the new annual Halloween tradition, the franchise borrows an idea from the second movie by taking another step back into the past to show us just where the demonic forces from the previous movies got their start. And even though it isn't quite as good as the first two, I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

Let me take you back to the year that was 1988. George H.W. Bush was elected into the White House, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's parents just didn't understand, and yours truly was only six years old. The sisters depicted in the first two Paranormal Activity movies are just kids themselves, too. Young Katie (Chloe Cserngey) and Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) have recently moved with their mother, Julie (Lauren Bittner), into the home of Julie's boyfriend Dennis (Chris Smith). It isn't long, however, before bizarre incidents start happening around the house.

It begins when, during an earthquake, Dennis notices some falling dust silhouetting what appears to be an invisible figure in he and Julie's bedroom. A wedding videographer by trade, he installs his cache of camcorders around the house as surveillance devices to keep an eye on what's happening. Furniture moves around the house, household objects start levitating, a babysitter is accosted by an unseen being. As these events escalate, everything seems to focus on Kristi's new imaginary friend, "Toby." But as these occurrences become much more sinister in nature, it quickly comes to light that Toby is neither as imaginary nor as friendly as originally perceived.

If you've read my reviews, you're aware that I absolutely loved the first two Paranormal Activity movies. So I was naturally pretty excited to see the third movie. And I walked out of the theater disappointed that practically none of what appears in the trailers and commercials is actually in the movie. That's really the only problem I had with it. It's like they were advertising a completely different version of the movie. I wanted to see the movie from the commercials, because it looked awesome. But the actual Paranormal Activity 3 is not the one that the advertising campaign is promising. That's kind of a shame, though I must say that I still enjoyed the movie a lot.

Sitting in the director's chair are Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the directors of the (allegedly fake) documentary Catfish. The way they put Catfish together made them a perfect fit for the "found footage" genre, and their work here is fantastic. Not a single frame of the movie is wasted. Everything is building to something, whether it's a scare of an advancement of the plot. This buildup fosters a level of suspense and dread that makes the frightening moments way more effective.

I especially liked their use of a camera that's ostensibly mounted on an oscillating fan. It pans back and forth across the living room and kitchen in twenty-second increments, allowing things to sneak up on us. It actually sets up two of the best scares in the movie. It was a novel idea on Joost and Schulman's part, a bit of creativity that really makes the movie that much scarier. I do think, though, that Joost and Schulman could have gotten away with stealing the split-screen concept from the Japanese Paranormal Activity. They could have pulled it off.

My only problem with their direction is that the movie looks way too crisp. For everything about the 1988 setting Joost and Schulman get right, the movie still looks like it was shot with high-definition digital cameras. My family used to own one of those big VHS camcorders, and none of the videos we shot ever looked half as good as this movie does. And I sincerely doubt that camcorders in the '80s recorded in 16:9 widescreen either. This whole paragraph, though, is basically just nitpicking. It's an incredibly minor gripe that doesn't even really matter in the grand scheme of things. Joost and Schulman did an otherwise great job, and they should be proud of themselves.

I also thought the script by Christopher Landon was very good. Both sequels have been about escalation; Paranormal Activity 2 escalated the scares, while this one escalates the scope of the franchise's mythology. The first two movies set up that Katie and Kristi have been haunted since their childhoods, and that one of their ancestors may have made some kind of deal with the devil. Without going into spoiler territory here, Landon expands upon this in a rather frightening way, one that could change how one would view the other two movies in retrospect.

While I will confess that part of the movie's concept — that we're watching VHS tapes the adult Katie gave to Kristi shortly before the events of the second movie — seems to only exist to shoehorn in cameos from Katie Featherston and Sprague Grayden, I thought Landon did an awesome job in expanding on the hauntings from the first two movies. Though the movie's status as a prequel means there was no forward movement in the franchise's overall arc, and we still don't know just where the hell things are going after Paranormal Activity 2's ending, Landon has still written a terrifying movie that both shakes up and adds to the franchise's ability to scare the pants off its fans.

London also manages to avoid a trap that a lot of found footage movies fall in by not having the characters argue over whether or not they should keep filming. More often than not, I've seen at least one scene in a found footage movie where someone will be justifiably pissed off at the cameraman and angrily demand that he stop filming. But not here! Everyone's pretty much cool with the cameras. And without those arguing scenes, the movie moves a lot smoother. It doesn't make any logical sense, since as in other found footage movies, the climax would make much more sense had whomever filming just dropped the camera and ran for the hills. But then the movie would just kinda stop and we'd have no ending, unless they started using footage from security cameras or even ditched the found footage gimmick and transitioned into a regular movie like in the climax of Behind the Mask.

He gives a group of characters that are all very likable as well. The first two movies both featured at least one character that you'd probably be justified in disliking. Pretty much everyone who saw the first movie thought Micah was an annoying douchebag and Brian Boland's character in the second one was kind of a prick. But everyone in Paranormal Activity 3 is someone you can root for, someone whose story you'll hope has a happy ending. It's a large part of what makes the movie so good. While it's certainly cathartic to see annoying characters face the monster's wrath in most horror movies, it can be just as scary to take a bunch of sympathetic characters and place them in peril. That's the kind of movie Landon has written, and I applaud his efforts.

It helps that the characters are all played by fantastic actors. Everyone in the movie puts forth their absolute best. Lauren Bittner gives us a credible, believable performance, while Dustin Ingram — who plays a friend of Dennis's and provides some of the movie's lighter moments — steals a lot of the scenes he's in. I got a real kick out of Chris Smith too. His performance is funny, enjoyable, and entertaining.

Of the child actors, Chloe Cserngey aces her role as the young Katie, but she's outshined by Jessica Tyler Brown. Brown alternates between sweet and spooky, giving us a lot of moments that are simultaneously cute and disturbing. She plays the role very mysteriously; you know that something is going on with her, but you're never quite sure what. In particular, the scenes where she wakes up in the middle of the night so she can have one-sided conversations with "Toby" are very creepy and foreboding. It's a great performance, one that actually helps add to the movie's feeling of dread.

Although I didn't like it as much as the first two, Paranormal Activity 3 is still a great flick. It's suspenseful and scary, and fills in some of the blanks in the overall story that may or may not have been created by the other two. But it raises just as many questions as it answers, more than likely just so they can have something to do in the next movie. (And if you think they aren't going to make Paranormal Activity 4, you're out of your mind.) That's something that can be overlooked, though, because it's still a damn fine movie. You probably won't like the movie if you weren't a fan of the first two, but I am and I enjoyed it. I do wonder, though, what they'll do with Paranormal Activity 4. Do they do another prequel? Do they follow up on the ending of the second one? I guess we'll have to wait a year and see.

Final Rating: ***½

Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night (2010)

Though its origins can be traced back to 1980 and it entered the cultural mainstream in 1999, the "found footage" genre has only recently become fairly commonplace. And with the genre's surge in popularity over the years, one of its most talked-about entries has been Paranormal Activity. Premiering at film festivals in 2007 before its wide theatrical release in 2009, the low-budget haunted house story was a surprise hit at the box office. It was so popular that a sequel was almost immediately approved.

I reviewed Paranormal Activity 2 shortly after its release last year, but I've only recently discovered the existence of another movie carrying the Paranormal Activity 2 name. It turns out that the Japanese film industry decided to cash in on the success of the original movie by making their own sequel, Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night. I'm used to Italy making sequels and spin-offs to American horror movies (the most famous being Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2, an unlicensed sequel to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead), but this is the first I've heard of that from Japan. And once I'd heard about it, I just had to see it. So let's dig into that other Paranormal Activity 2 and see if it was as good as the American one.

Our tale of terror follows a young woman named Haruka Yamano (Noriko Aoyama), who has just returned to her home in Tokyo after visiting the United States. Her return is not quite a happy one, unfortunately, as her trip to America had been cut short due to a car accident that broke both of her legs. With her father out of the country on a business trip, Haruka is left in the care of her teenage brother Koichi (Aoi Nakamura).

Haruka awakens one morning to discover that her wheelchair has moved on its own volition despite its wheels being locked. Initially believing that someone had broken into the house, Koichi sets up video cameras throughout the house to catch the burglar if they try it again. But when his cameras record footage of the wheelchair moving again, Koichi begins to suspect that a supernatural being is at play. This suspicion is further reinforced when a pile of salt he leaves in Haruka's bedroom is scattered by unseen forces.

But that will be the least of Haruka and Koichi's worries. The haunting begins to escalate beyond messing with wheelchairs and salt, as things around the house end up smashed and Haruka is dragged out of bed by her hair. An attempt to have a Shinto priest exorcise the house only serves to make the demon haunting them angrier. And if you've seen the American Paranormal Activity movies, you'll know that this story won't have a happy ending.

A few years ago, it seemed like every horror movie that Hollywood cranked out was based on a Japanese one. So I guess Japan finally decided to give a little tit for tat and copy an American horror movie. Granted, they did what Hollywood didn't and labeled their movie a sequel instead of a remake. But having watched this flick from start to finish, I can say that yeah, it's pretty much a Japanese remake of the first Paranormal Activity. It follows the exact same formula, right down to copying scenes from the original. You'd think they'd do more with a so-called "sequel" besides doing exactly what the prior movie did, but nope, you'd be wrong.

The movie was written and directed by Toshikazu Nagae, who doesn't really bring anything new to the table outside of a few tweaks for the benefit of Japanese audiences. A real "been there, done that" feeling permeates the movie. That isn't always a bad thing, since the American Paranormal Activity 2 liberally borrowed from the first one yet was still very effective. But this particular movie feels more mundane, like it's just going through the motions.

Nagae does shake things up a little bit, however, by making the two main character siblings instead of a couple. By putting them in different rooms during the nighttime scenes, it gives him the chance to make the movie more visually intriguing. He accomplishes this by utilizing a split-screen effect to show us how the haunting affects Haruka and Koichi both simultaneously and separately as they sleep. It's a unique idea, but Nagae unfortunately doesn't really do much with it. Most of the scenes that involve it usually end up with both characters in the same room anyway.

And while Nagae's script closely follows what Oren Peli wrote for the first movie, there were a few things I feel like I should mention. One was the scene where the unlucky siblings bring in a Shinto priest to perform an exorcism. I'll give Nagae credit for going beyond the demonologist who said "oh crap, there's evil here, I can't help you" in the original Paranormal Activity. I just wish they'd capitalized on it more, though. There's just one scene with a priest, that's it. I don't know how spirituality and demon-fighting work in Japan, but couldn't they have gotten a bit more proactive in trying to overcome their ghost problem?

But that can be forgiven thanks to the solid acting. Noriko Aoyama and Aoi Nakamura are sadly not as memorable as their American counterparts, but they still do the best they can and are quite likable in their roles. I was actually surprised that Nakamura's character isn't as quick to provoke the monsters (or as completely douchebaggy) as Micah Sloat from the first movie, since the movie copied the original so much, but that was actually an okay change with me. Nakamura's performance is still engaging, as was Aoyama's. The pair are believable, enjoyable, and really hold the movie together.

If I may summarize my thoughts into a few words, Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night is okay. It's one of those movies that's just there, a simple way to kill an hour and a half without feeling like you've had your time wasted. The movie is a mediocre wannabe at worst. But then again, its best isn't really that great either. There are a few good scares, and one especially creepy scene near the end, but the movie isn't anything that hasn't been done better by other filmmakers. It does make me wonder, however, if there will be a Japanese Paranormal Activity 3. I'd actually like to see that.

Final Rating: **½

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

When it was released nationwide this time last year, Paranormal Activity was a bigger hit than initially expected. Shot on an unbelievably minuscule budget, it pulled in a worldwide gross of nearly 200 million dollars and got a ton of positive reviews dating as far back as its festival run in 2007. While there was a certain level of backlash from people who thought it was an overhyped bore, it still proved popular enough to warrant a sequel. But while most studios wait two, maybe three years after a movie's release before making a sequel, here we are a scant twelve months later, talking about Paranormal Activity 2. I enjoyed the first one a lot, so let's go check out the second one.

To be truthful, the movie is really more of a prequel than a sequel, taking place roughly two months prior to the events of the first movie. At the center of the story is Kristi Rey (Sprague Grayden), the sister of the young woman tormented in the original Paranormal Activity. When she and her husband Daniel (Brian Boland) come home to discover someone has apparently broken in and trashed the place, they install a series of strategically-placed security cameras set to record 24 hours a day.

The cameras quickly begin capturing a number of strange occurrences. Lights flicker before turning themselves off, things begin moving around on their own, strange noises happen in the middle of the night, typical haunted house stuff. The family's housekeeper (Vivis Cortez) warns that there are evil spirits at play, but only Ali (Molly Ephraim), Daniel's teenage daughter from a prior marriage, seems to pay her any mind. Though she at first posits that the spirit could actually be her mother trying to communicate from beyond the grave, its increasingly malevolent behavior soon convinces Ali that it may be a demon that is targeting her one-year-old half-brother Hunter (William and Jackson Prieto).

When Oren Peli made the original Paranormal Activity, he showed that you don't need a ton of money, big-name stars, or buckets of blood to make an effective horror movie. All you needed was some suspense and a little spark to send a viewer's imagination running wild. Paranormal Activity 2 made the wise decision to avoid messing with what worked in its predecessor, giving us more of the same yet building upon it. It follows the same formula and makes it way more frightening. And while it borders on hyperbole, I have no problem calling it one of the best horror movies of 2010.

Stepping into the role of director is Tod Williams, who deftly taking over where Peli left off. He could have done something incredibly stupid and gone the Blair Witch 2 route, but Williams doesn't change what worked before. He takes the formula from the first movie and cranks up the suspense and the scares. Williams even borrows some of the original movie's scares and adds something new to them, making them even scarier. Doing so allows him to play with the audience's expectations. In using some of these familiar setups, he kindles an "oh no, not this again" feeling before spinning it in a different direction and scaring the pants off the viewer.

He also manages to effectively combine cheap scares and suspense. With each scene, Williams essentially places a nuclear bomb somewhere in a room. You don't know where the bomb is, you don't when the bomb will detonate or even if it will at all. But you know it's there, and just when you think it's gonna go off, it doesn't. And when you breathe that sigh of relief, that's when Williams lets loose. Sometimes it's a short scare, other times its prolonged. And in the last fifteen or twenty minutes, it's insanity. Williams knows exactly what he's doing, and the movie is a lot better for it.

I also liked the fact that the concept of multiple stationary cameras was introduced. It allows the movie to get away from everyone needing to lug cameras around all the time. (The character of Ali does seem fond of carrying a camera around, but only does so when the plot actually calls for it.) It also gives use the opportunity to capture events and get camera angles that wouldn't be possible otherwise, while averting that whole "why do they keep filming?!" problem that's long plagued the found footage genre.

Continuing on, I'm not sure if I should critique the writing. Scripts are really inconsequential in a lot of horror movies. But I will give Paranormal Activity 2 an A for effort in the writing department. Writers Michael R. Perry, Christopher Landon, and Tom Pabst actually make a decent go of it. The way they connected this haunting to the first movie's was a neat idea, but I'm still not sure if I liked their explanation for the demon's presence in the first place. I thought it was scarier when the demon was haunting them for the sake of being evil. The only thing that really scares me more than a reason is no reason. The good thing is, though, that the motive is explained in such a way that it could be written off as sheer conjecture by the characters. The demon could still be evil for evil's sake.

But to tell you the honest truth, any of the movie's flaws come from the script. I can't go too much into it without giving away a bunch of the movie (even though the plot synopsis did some of that already), but yeah, the script had a problem or two here or there. It's nothing that can't be totally overlooked, so the problems aren't as big as one might think they are.

The one weird thing about it that didn't really hit me until after the fact was the housekeeper character. What's with movies dealing with the supernatural having older ethnic characters that know everything turn up? At least she was more proactive in helping ward off the trouble than the demonologist from the first Paranormal Activity. Here, a light in the backyard flickers once, the baby starts crying, and she absolutely loses it. She starts waving incense around and saying prayers and incantations and we're barely twenty minutes into the movie, long before the really spooky stuff starts. This lady knows the score and the game hasn't even started yet. The family patriarch fires the poor housekeeper shortly thereafter, so I guess it she's just there to continue the horror movie trend of nobody listening to the prophet of doom.

I guess the only thing left for me to talk about is the cast. The actors aren't as memorable as Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat were in the first movie, but they all do just fine. Molly Ephraim is particularly likable and sweet, while Sprague Grayden is believable in her role. It's a shame, though, that Brian Boland's character is so unlikable. I mean, Sloat's character in the first movie was a tremendous douchebag, but he was still amusing. Boland's character is just a dick. But really, that's more of a complaint about how he's written than Boland's performance.

The funny part is that the family dog is the best actor in the movie. I don't want to sound like I'm disparaging the human actors, because I'm not. But the dog is actually a character you can sympathize with and root for, all because of how its scenes are handled and just how well the dog performs. I know I must sound crazy, but yeah, the dog was my favorite character, and whoever trained him should be applauded.

Is Paranormal Activity 2 better than its predecessor? I can't say for sure at this point. I'd probably have to sit down and watch both of them back to back to ultimately make that decision. But what I can tell you right now is that Paranormal Activity 2 is a damn scary movie in its own right. Whether or not you liked the original movie, the second one is a frightening flick no matter how you slice it. I just know that they'll make Paranormal Activity 3 after how successful this one's been at the box office so far, so here's hoping it won't be the one that sucks.

Final Rating: ****

Paranormal Entity (2009)

I am continually amazed by the existence of The Asylum. These innovators of the "mockbuster" have somehow managed to stay afloat on a business model of nothing but cheesy knockoffs of mainstream movies. I usually just ignore their movies, since they generally aren't anything I'm interested in.

But a couple of them have caught my eye, however. One was Monster, which I just recently reviewed. The other was Paranormal Entity, a rather blatant attempt to cash in on the unexpected success of Paranormal Activity. I don't particularly know why Paranormal Entity grabbed my attention, but when I saw it was available on Netflix's "Instant Streaming" feature, I figured I'd give it a shot.

Welcome to the home of Ellen Finley (Fia Perera) and her twenty-something kids, Thomas (Shane Van Dyke) and Samantha (Erin Marie Hogan). For some time now, something supernatural has been making itself comfortable in their house. While they initially thought it was the spirit of the recently-deceased family patriarch trying to communicate with them, they've found that it instead wants to cause them problems. It's relatively harmless at first; phones ring with nobody on the other line, dishes in the kitchen are broken, the TV turns on and off on its own.

But as time goes by, the spirit becomes much more agitated. It is especially drawn to Samantha, who is actually physically attacked by it. However, none of the Finleys will be safe when the ghost escalates its malevolent behavior.

While I can see how someone could have an opinion of it that differs from mine, I thought Paranormal Activity was great. Granted, it has its flaws. It's not a perfect movie. But I felt it was effective enough and accomplished what it wanted to do. Paranormal Entity, on the other hand, isn't so great. It's not as bad as Monster, but it's still pretty lame. They aren't hiding the fact that it's supposed to be a Paranormal Activity clone, with quite a few scares and scenes lifted directly from the movie it's copying. They don't even replicate the scenes that well, either.

The odd thing about it is that there are no production credits whatsoever. There are no credits for a crew or cast at the end of the movie, or even the Asylum logo. Even The Asylum's website lists the credits as "not available." But thanks to the Internet, I've found some names and can do a more accurate review.

Serving as the movie's writer and director is Shane Van Dyke, who I felt did a really disappointing job on both ends. As a director, Van Dyke could have done a lot better. There are precious few real scares, and very little tension or suspense to speak of. Anything he does do right, I've seen done better elsewhere.

What gets me is how utterly cheap the movie looks. Oren Peli made Paranormal Activity on a reported budget of 15,000 dollars, but Van Dyke's budget must have been whatever change he found under his couch cushions one weekend. The whole movie has an artificial feeling to it. The home furnishings looks like they were on loan from a furniture store, and the house looks like one that a real estate agent would put on display in new neighborhoods. The house doesn't feel lived in at all. The shelves are all empty, there are no personal touches to anything, and they even have one of those plastic security covers over the thermostat. If you'd told me that Van Dyke knew a real estate agent and borrowed a house from them to film the movie, I would absolutely believe you.

I also got a laugh out of some of the smaller things. The night-vision scenes don't even resemble night-vision, instead looking like someone slapped a funny color filter over regular footage. And that noise that indicates the ghost is doing something? It sounded like a plane was flying overhead, or a loud air conditioner was turning on. I don't know why I thought that was so funny, but I couldn't help but giggle every time it happened.

As a writer, Van Dyke continues to disappoint. Not only does he only give us half an ending, but he barely feels like he's making any sort of effort to create his own movie. Like with my review of Monster, I must admit that I shouldn't be upset when a mockbuster totally rips off a movie. But after a certain point, when does a movie stop being a clone and start being a full-blown remake? I mean, after a while, I started wishing I was watching Paranormal Activity instead.

The only thing left for me to review is the cast. That shouldn't be too hard, considering that there are only four people in the movie, and one of them has probably less than five minutes of screen time. And to be perfectly honest with you, the cast is disposable. Van Dyke is especially disposable, as I don't think we ever even see his face through the whole movie. (Though that probably was due to him being both the writer and director as well, so that actually makes sense. Doesn't make the movie or his performance any better, but still.) The only actor who I felt made any sort of impression was Erin Marie Hogan. Her performance isn't anything spectacular, but it's believable. Hogan is better than the movie deserves, in any event.

Paranormal Entity is one of those bad movies that is watchable, yet still manages to annoy you with how dumb it is. If you're not a fan of the "found footage" style of horror movie, then you'll probably skip it altogether anyway. But if you do dig that sort of thing, just stick with Paranormal Activity instead. Paranormal Entity isn't the worst of the two Asylum movies I've seen thus far, but that doesn't stop it from being a tremendously bad waste of time.

Final Rating: *½

Paranormal Activity (2007)

It's weird to think that The Blair Witch Project is ten years old. It doesn't seem like it should be that old, does it? But that length of time makes it easy to forget just how big a movie it was. It was a pop culture phenomenon, and pioneered how filmmakers and movie studios would use the Internet as a promotional tool. The Internet has also been a boon for smaller movies that may have otherwise never been heard of, especially those in the horror genre. As they pop up at different film festivals, movie news websites pick up on them and the hype begins.

And over the last couple of months, the hype machine has been kicked into overdrive for this year's "little indie horror movie that could," Paranormal Activity. The movie premiered at the Screamfest Film Festival in 2007 and spent two years touring film festivals and college campuses before scaring the pants off Steven Spielberg and getting a distribution deal from Paramount Pictures. And with Paramount's backing, the movie's got a nationwide theatrical release two weeks ago. With tons of glowing reviews, the super-hype has become almost palpable. The movie's poster even has "one of the scariest movies of all time" plastered across it. So let's see if Paranormal Activity is worth it.

The movie focuses on Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston), a young couple who have recently moved in together. But the odd things happening around the house suggests that they are not alone. Katie thinks that it may be a supernatural being that she believes has been haunting her since childhood. Unconvinced yet curious, Micah sets up a video camera, hoping to catch the ghost in action.

It doesn't take too long for Micah's camera to pick up various occurrences in the middle of the night. Lights start flickering on and off, doors open and close on their own, and weird noises echo in the hallway. The oddest comes when Katie wakes up in the middle of the night and spends several hours standing by the bed, staring at Micah as he sleeps, before going outside to sit in the backyard. The fact that she has no memory of it afterward makes it even stranger. But when Micah starts egging on their supernatural visitor in order to catch it on camera, what starts out as mildly annoying behavior escalates to something more proactive and aggressive. And an unhappy ghost is a dangerous ghost.

Paranormal Activity will not appeal to people who don't like the "found footage" style of movie, or to those who have become jaded by movies that don't live up to excessive hype. But if you allow yourself to be sucked into what's happening, you'll find that it's actually quite effective. The actors are convincing; it doesn't rely on cheesy special effects; and it is crafted in such a way that it feels authentic. Granted, there's the "this is a work of fiction" legalese with the copyright notices at the end of the movie. And common sense will naturally tell you that it's all fiction. But it's the fun kind of fakery, the kind where as long as your suspension of disbelief can hold out, you'll want to think it's actually happening.

Part of what makes Paranormal Activity work so well is the efforts of writer/director Oren Peli. You would never guess that Peli has no formal training in filmmaking, because despite being armed with only a tiny cast, a high-end camcorder, and a $15,000 budget, the movie looks like it was made by someone with several years of experience.

I know that the movie could have been made traditionally, but Peli's use of the so-called "Blair Witch technique" makes the movie that much creepier. Peli uses it to build atmosphere and suspense instead of the hollow scares that plague most horror movies. He even goes one step further, making the antagonist our own imaginations. Instead of a seven-foot-tall masked psychopath with a butcher knife kicking in the door, the villain is booming footsteps coming from nowhere, lights flickering for no reason, a door that moves by itself, shadows that shouldn't be there. Peli makes darn sure that it is the unseen things that go bump in the night that we should be afraid of.

I also appreciated that Peli made sure that the ghost made its presence immediately known. I complained in my Cloverfield review that I hated having to wait half an hour for the monster to show up when it was the only reason I wanted to see the movie in the first place. And truth be told, there's more than a few movies like that. But Peli averts this, getting to the haunting within the first ten minutes. He doesn't waste any time running directly into the haunted house and pulling us in with him. Paranormal Activity doesn't waste any time getting to the point, and it's a better movie for it.

Another thing I thought was very well done was that it seemed entirely plausible for the camera to keep rolling. A lot of "found footage" movies lack that plausibility; when every bit of human logic would dictate that the characters should drop the camera and run for their lives, they keep filming. Why? Because there would be no movie if they thought logically. But Paranormal Activity's reasoning for continuing to document the haunting is actually believable: Micah's just kind of a prick that doesn't know when to quit. It's so simple, but the way the character is developed, it makes complete sense.

And speaking of the characters, let's get into the acting. With a movie like this, where the cast is comprised of only two or three people, the actors can make or break a movie. If they can't connect with the audience, then they'll tune out and you'll have a big ol' flop on your hands. But speaking solely for myself, I thought that Paranormal Activity's actors did a fantastic job.

Of the two actors, I thought that Katie Featherston was more impressive. She's in front of the camera for nearly the entire movie, so it falls on her to do the lion's share of the work. Featherston is up to the task given to her, and she's quite likable and sympathetic. She never gets really shrill or annoying, even as the haunting (and Micah's behavior) grows increasingly agitating. You wanted to reach into the screen and strangle Heather Donahue during The Blair Witch Project, but Featherston thankfully avoids that. She's not going to win an Oscar, but for the purposes of Paranormal Activity, she's perfect.

Playing her boyfriend and the movie's cameraman is Micah Sloat, who I thought was very entertaining. The character becomes more and more of a douchebag as the movie progresses. He seems less interested in helping Katie overcome her fears and more focused on antagonizing the ghost and catching it on camera. And though the character is a bit of a jackass, Sloat's performance is still an amiable one. I actually have to agree with Noah Antwiler's review and say that, in a way, I could identify with Sloat's character. If all this weird stuff was going on in my house, I'd probably be preoccupied with trying to provoke the ghost into doing something so I could videotape the results and put the footage on YouTube. Maybe that speaks ill of me, but it's true. But regardless, I thought Sloat was a lot of fun, so I can't complain.

Naturally, Paranormal Activity will draw comparisons to The Blair Witch Project. Both of them have tiny budgets, were shot in similar manners, and have similar setups. The stars in both movies used their real names. Both had very unique viral marketing techniques, with Paranormal Activity's theatrical release starting in only twelve theaters and asking people to "demand it" through Eventful.com if they wanted to see it in their area prior to its wide release. And just like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity has gotten its fair share of backlash from people who believed that the hype was all in vain. But then, there's just no pleasing some folks, am I right? However, I'd actually go out on a limb and call it superior to The Blair Witch Project. That will be a pretty bold statement to some people, but I'd call it a possibility.

Hype or no hype, if you haven't seen Paranormal Activity yet, you've probably got your mind already made up regarding whether or not you'll like the movie. This kind of movie surely won't appeal to everyone, so if you do see it and don't like it, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you ask me, it's a damn fine horror movie. I don't know if it lives up to all of the hype, as if it ever could, but it's still a heck of a movie. It isn't flawless, but it's good enough for me. And if any ghosts try screwing around with me like that, I'm calling the Ghostbusters. I don't care if the Ghostbusters aren't real, I'll call them anyway. See if I don't.

Final Rating: ****