PA5 is as probably about as good as PA1 or PA3, which is to say that it’s a perfectly acceptable jump scare timewaster with more good will than innovation. Perhaps the Paranormal Activity series is settling into a pattern similar to the Star Trek movies except here all of the odd numbered entries in the franchise are decent and the even numbered entries are disposable. Essentially the film turns into a possession/coven horror yarn, which eventually (and rather cleverly) folds back into the ever-expanding Paranormal Activity universe.Īgainst all odds Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones actually deserves to exist and be a hit Then a memory game he owns starts acting like an Ouija board, he pulls gross hair like strands from his eyeballs, and other creepy stuff is afoot. Shortly after that, he starts to develop floating and super-strength powers a la Chronicle. They find all sorts of strange cultish, coven-ish artifacts hidden in the apartment and then one morning Jesse wakes up with mysterious marks on his arm. Then as the digging continues, things keep getting weirder. The victim is a mildly creepy old lady, and the major suspect is weirdly the squeaky clean valedictorian from their school. Instead, two buddies, Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) and Hector (Jorge Diaz) start investigating a murder that occurred in their apartment block. You sit around waiting for them to notice a ghost in their apartment or set up a little hidden camera night recording, but it never happens. The first 20 minutes or so settle into the standard found footage routine of watching a group of teens play pranks and connect over a camera. The first change is geographical, with this PA romp shifting locals to sunny Me-he-co (Mexico). Whether or not this new direction will lead to more sequels worth seeing remains to be seen, but the good news is that against all odds Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is one of the best entries in the series to date. By borrowing (aka stealing) from a variety of different found footage horror franchises (mostly Chronicle), the Paranormal Activity franchise has somehow reinvented itself. Thankfully, the folks behind the series decided it was time to change things up and actually delivered a movie quite different from what came before. However, money was still being made and so Paranormal Activity 5 was going to happen no matter what. Sure, the Paranormal Activity 3 proved to be an enjoyable mix of 80s kitsch and high-fi/low-fi scares, but by part four the format had grown so nauseatingly sale that the profits dropped by half. Bringing in almost $200 million worldwide on a $15 thousand dollar budget, the movie was a big fat success story and thus began the inevitable Hollywood practice of repeating the trick to death. Here was a return not just to no-budget indie horror from a major studio, but also a film that pulled the genre from the torture porn era into the found footage era. When Oren Peli’s shot-in-my-bedroom indie got a major release from Paramount, it was a big ol’ shock. 6.7/10, fine, one thumb up, average (or above average given its genre and release date), etc.It’s hard to believe we’re now five movies into a franchise based on a locked off camera, a bedroom, and things that go bump in the night. For a January 3 release, this is far past a tepid achievement. This is a tepid and modest achievement: nothing quite new, but with enough entertainment value to be respectable. I think they know that this series is a yearly tradition for its core audience so its style and mythology makes it somewhat endearing for annual casual viewings. However, I don't really think that it's even trying to be scary anymore. There's one jump scare that works but that's it. The biggest issue, however, is that the humor works but it's not scary, really at all, and when it appears to try, it relies on clichés. The story does its job and is reasonably interesting, particularly the ending and how it ties in with the rest of the franchise. It's 84 minutes long but doesn't necessarily feel too short or like it's trying to reach a feature-length running time. The humor works well I actually found myself laughing a decent amount since it has a naturalistic charm about the whole thing. The new characters and relocation are a nice breath of fresh air and the acting is fine since everyone's just playing a regular person. The trailers looked generic, the acting looked awful, and its delayed October-to-January release date pretty much solidified my cynicism. When I first heard of this, I was naturally apprehensive.
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