Bad lights, shaky camera and awfully familiar action
Latest instalment in bloated horror franchise will have audiences seeing things they’ve seen many times before
This barrel appears to have no bottom. Five films later and the Paranormal Activity bucket is still splashing as fishy occurrences continue to haunt ordinary human beings, who capture all the shrieking magic on consumer camera equipment.
This is the whole gimmick behind Oren Peli’s $ 350- million dollar franchise that is now sending spooky shoots into other demographics: All the spectral hijinks are supposed to feel “real” because the camera is shaky, the lighting is poor and the dialogue is sporadic, random and frequently vulgar — just like in real life.
And now that everyone records just about everything from shoe- tying to gum- chewing on iPhones, the idea of watching everyday moments unfold on the big screen doesn’t feel so foreign, or so self- inflated.
Moreover, these movies thrive on the false sense of security a camcorder can afford as it lends a sense of safe distance by placing a piece of machinery, a mechanical witness, between ourselves and the action.
It’s the reason why Jesse ( Andrew Jacobs) and Hector ( Jorge Diaz) walk into a maw of satanic mischief.
The opening sequence shows us footage of their high school graduation, captured via phone, with all the goofy asides we expect. They keep the cameras rolling when they get home but something strange is happening in the downstairs apartment.
In a moment of creative inspiration they decide to send the camera down a vent on a rope.
As an audience, we knew it was going to be a bad idea from the beginning because the very title promises g- g- ghosts.
What they see changes their lives forever. It also provides the momentum for the rest of the movie as Hector and Jesse realize the downstairs neighbour is performing some kind of ritual on buxom women.
Without unveiling the precious scraps of story that allow this movie to reach a featurelength running- time, Hector and Jesse end up making some rather threatening enemies from the other side.
Like all teen- oriented chillers, the selling point is suspense. The filmmakers make us watch 20 minutes of banal banter before they inevitably make us cross a dark threshold into the unknown, where two things can happen: Either there’s a gag featuring one of the actors making light of the situation, or they treat us to a terrifying special effect to make us go “Ayeeee!”
This Paranormal Activity offers both of the above, but little else. The only thing that saves it is the new Latin angle.
For years, we’ve watched white people run from mansions to escape one demon haunting after another, so why not a spectral possession or two at an Oxnard apartment complex where most of the tenants speak Spanish?
It’s a nice change and capitalizes on a whole new form of false security because we’ve never seen communal spaces like these seethe with dark energy. Usually, the threat is gang related, and writer- director Christopher Landon turns the gangster stereotypes into the film’s best moments as he pits thugs with sawed off shotguns against witches.
There are some truly fun moments, but like all these movies without anything interesting to say, it takes forever to arrive on their gloomy doorstep.
Landon gets high marks for turning the 1980s toy Simon into an electronic Ouija board, but like the toy itself, the movie can only hit a few notes over and over again. The sequence changes, but most audience members will be bored by the predictable pattern.