Ed's Review Dot Com

Paramount Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, Room 101,

Andrew Jacobs, Jorge Diaz, Gabrielle Walsh, Renée Victor, Noemi Gonzalez, David Saucedo, Gloria Sandoval, Richard Cabral, Carlos Pratts

A group of Latino kids notice strange things happening around their apartment, and then the upstairs neighbor is murdered. Being curious, they start snooping around the now empty apartment and discover much more than they’re ready to know. Then Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) starts acting very strange, until it comes to their knowledge that he has been marked at birth by an evil group. This is not a sequel, but more of a spin off Paranormal Activity series.

I was sorely disappointed in this film. It was odd because this just suddenly came out, without much buzz or pre-promotion, and then we were bombarded with previews on TV. These were very short teaser trailers, although I never saw a real trailer in the theater, and made us think it would be a really good new frightening movie as the other ones have been. But it seems this franchise is waning! This movie refers to a few of the things that happened in the main series, and the house in Moorpark is familiar, if you’ve seen the other 4 films in the series, but other than that, this is a completely different path. This is more voodoo and sacrifice, even though it’s the same batch of bad girls. It seems they have more than one trick in their book of evil secrets.

Furthermore, I am bored to tears with these found footage movies. There’s a reason why movie makers use good equipment, cameras, lighting, and sound. It’s an exact science mixed with a lot of art. This really does look like a couple kids did it, but not in a good way. I seriously think we could have done a better job telling this story when I was 12 and had an 8MM movie camera. There was nothing really scary, and I’m just not talking about the loud noise make you jump stuff which any kid hiding around the corner in your house can pull off, but I mean there wasn’t anything really scary going on. They worked us up with creeping around where they’re not supposed to be, but it was just a setup without a payoff. None of this was anything but laughable. I didn’t like the characters, and didn’t really give a hoot. When they head out trying to solve the problem themselves without help and with no backup, it’s just another in a bunch of stupid decisions that make, doing things no one would ever really do, and just trying to move the stinky plot forward so they can get to the next scene.

I was very bored by this movie, and at the end, which is never an end, but the film just runs out, or someone we can’t see switches off the camera (that’s how all these things end) and as far as I could tell, no one else in the theater was impressed in the least either. It was the most quiet horror film I have ever seen. We were dumb enough to see this in one of the Extreme Cinemas where we get to pay extra for the special sound and picture, and it wasn’t worth it. I now hear a Paranormal Activity 5 is due out in the fall of 2014, to follow #4 which makes this version 4.5 I guess, but it was a waste, and I would be dubious about getting this as a rental (it’s sure to be on DVD very soon), but I wouldn’t recommend spending a dime on this to see it in a theater. This must be the worst film I’ve seen in a long, long time.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog