Whenever a movie series releases a third sequel, I generally have one important question: “how, after three previous movies, can a movie keep putting out fresh material?”
Unfortunately for Paranormal Activity 4, the answer is: they can’t.
The movie follows the story of Alex (Kathryn Newton), a teenage girl who spends her time after school with her boyfriend Ben (played by the incredibly recognizable Matt Shively). A character trait that assists in driving the film’s plot forward is Alex’s odd tendency to film everything in her everyday life.
Alex and Ben come across a neighboring boy, Robbie, in her family’s tree house, and this is where the strange occurrences begin. Robbie ends up staying with Alex and her family due to his mother being in the hospital.
What ends up happening, however, is a slew of very familiar scares, and an incredibly slow plot development. Every once in a while the viewer is caught off guard with something clever, but for most of the movie this is not the case. These traits are actually very uncharacteristic of the preceding films. Typically, they grow better and better as the film commences, and eventually reaches its climax. In the series’s the fourth iteration, the first hour of the film is far below average. It’s actually borderline boring, and I lost interest quickly.
Only in its later parts was the movie able to salvage what was left of my attention. The last 30 minutes of the film are arguably the best of any film in the series, and the ending was among the best ending to any horror movie I’ve ever seen. The horrifyingly thrilling ending of the film left a good taste in my mouth, and also created a sense of excitement for the inevitable fourth sequel; this does work well for fans of the series.
However, if the series wants to continue the success its experienced this far, it must not only continue to deliver these incredible endings but also giving us an entertaining amount of film preceding this climax. Without such improvement, the series will die and become a paranormal entity in and of itself. Score: 6.5/10
Brandon Mauriello / News Editor
