Directed by Gregory Plotkin
Starring Chris J. Murray, Brit Shaw, Dan Gill, Ivy George and Olivia Taylor Dudley
The time has come to finish this series off. And let me tell you something, people, found footage movies viewed the way that I just looked at them get old fast. Many years ago when I started to actively collect horror movies and started off with slasher flicks, I could watch a whole lot of those back-to-back without even batting an eye. When a lot of idiots talk about how all horror movie are the "same," odds are they're talking about slasher flicks and the stuff they heard from Randy's rules in Scream. Slasher movies, though...they tend to differ quite a bit in terms of origin story and script and execution and what killer angle they take. These movies? The level of sameness really is pretty jarring, if such a thing can be "jarring." Chalk that up to bad writing skills on my part. Alas, I have now watched every movie in the Paranormal Activity series, and I'm not going to lie, I feel free.
Six movies in, and much like the Saw franchise before it, the direction that the powers-that-be decided to take this time out was the 3D one. Looking back, I'm actually a little surprised that they hadn't done this already, but 3D tends to raise a film's budget substantially. According to the ever-accurate Wikipedia, this particular movie cost $10 million to produce. That's still a dead mosquito on your windshield in the grand scope of Hollywood, but it's double the price tag of any other movie in this series. I can't report just how big of a different this aspect of it made on the story, since I never saw this flick in theaters and watched it on another lonely Saturday night at my own damn house. Maybe some of the luster was lost? At any rate, let's get to the show.
The first thing that I need to mention that this movie actually has in its favor that the previous few films haven't is not just one but TWO fairly likable characters. The first guy that we meet in this movie is Mike (Dan Gill), boasting of one of the world's most foremost 1970s porn star mustaches but all things told actually a pretty well-played and affable dude. He has just broken up with his long-term girlfriend and needs a place to stay, and that place is the home of his brother Ryan (Chris J. Murray). Of course, Ryan has a family of his own - wife Emily (Brit Shaw) and young daughter Leila (Ivy George), and unfortunately, these characters become the focus of the movie as it goes along and Mike kind of vanishes to the back. Why? I don't know. The central family also has a friend named Skylar (Olivia Taylor Dudley) who is into new-agey Yoga stuff (God, I'm cool), and this would be likable character #2. The early scenes in this movie establish a little bit of romantic tension between Mike and Skylar, a.k.a. something RADICALLY different from what we've seen in this series so far, and the two actors actually have really good chemistry. It's a shame that it gets wasted in a found footage flick that Jon Lickness watched all alone two years after its release.
Setup time. The two brothers are setting up Christmas decorations when they find a mysterious box containing an old-school video camera and a stack of VHS tapes. I suppose this would be a good time to mention that the first scene in this movie was the ending of Paranormal Activity 3 and all of the creepy stuff that follows, because it's kind of central to the plot of this film. Yup, it turns out that the house that Ryan resides in now was built over the top of cult leader granny's house from that movie, and the tapes just sort of arrived at the house via osmosis. Ryan and Mike begin watching the tapes, containing footage of the young Kristi and Katie conducting strange psychic rituals...and they seem to be describing Leila's bedroom word-for-word. Ruh-roh.
The gimmick this time around is that the camera left behind by that dude from Part 3 whom I can't even be bothered to check what his name was is somehow able to see all of the demonic activity in the house. What this means for you, good reader and watcher, is a lot of cheesy 3D black swirly effects. In theaters, who knows, maybe they looked better. But in this series, a series that has been all about what you don't see (a plus even in films that I didn't like as much), it really sticks out like a sore thumb. And when I start throwing around cliches like that, you know it's time to move on to another topic.
And that topic would be...Leila, the family daughter who becomes the epicenter of the haunting. Creepy kids in horror movies are one of my major dicey propositions. I can count on something like two hands the number of times that I've seen this trope played well, and this would not be one of them. I'll give it to Ivy George; the young actress did her best, but the evil little girl being slowly possessed plot is a difficult one to make entertaining after we've seen it happen so many times in so many better stories. And if you noticed that connection to The Exorcist, you are one astute reader. This movie takes a page out of it in another way as the family calls a Priest in to see Leila, a first for this series and actually a rather welcome change. Father Todd doesn't get much airtime, but he's likable, so that's another plus in this movie's basket. It's not original in the least bit, but again, it's welcome.
All of this builds to a finale, with the demon "Tobi" (that has been mentioned in almost every movie in this series, by the way) trying to use Leila as a springboard to finally taking human form in the real world on one side and the family led by Father Todd on the other. I'll admit it, this movie actually has a pretty damn impressive last 10 minutes that had me legitimately tense on a few occasions. It makes up slightly for the terminally boring middle section consisting largely of watching those Sharknado-esque black swirlies swish around in the darkness.
It should be apparent that I liked this one a little better than the previous two films. For starters, I get the sense that this one had a script that the writers actually took a conscious effort to flesh out. And seriously, this movie had FOUR writers. They don't make 'em like they used to. You know how many people wrote Chinatown? One. You know how many people wrote the groundbreaking lyrical masterpiece that is "Run the World (Girls)"? Six. I rest my case. The aforementioned likable characters were also a big boost. And if I still did the Skeevy Paragraph, rest assured that Olivia Taylor Dudley would have gotten her just due there. The major problem with the film, though, is that it still just isn't very scary, at least not until the very tail end of the proceedings. Thus, I award this film ** out of ****.
Lastly, a few words about the Paranormal Activity series in total. Looking back, I actually think that I would bump up my rating of the third film another half-star to that *** "thumbs-up" range. Part of that could be rose-colored glasses for when I started this project, and part of that could be that I'm just feeling generous, but it IS a better movie than everything that came after. It can't be denied that this series has been infinitely profitable, and while press materials seemed to indicate that the movie in this review is indeed the last one, I have difficulty believing that. It's hard to say no to a big return on such minor investments. Personally, though...I'm just over this whole subgenre of horror, and it's a little sad to say since the first movie is the one that kicked off the whole craze. For those who don't remember, I gave that movie *** 1/2, and I actually think it still stands the test of time as a modern classic. What say you, loyal readers? Would I feel different if I saw the sequels in the same way, after a 40-minute drive through the countryside with a storm brewing that never quite hit storm status and with maybe nine other people in that dark, quiet theater? Would these movies be more effective? Unfortunately, I can't say.
And now, the Xenomorphs and the Predators are about to do their very, very violent thing in a multi-part Mega-Review...
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