PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 (2012)

Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Cast: Katie Featherston, Brady Allen, Kathryn Newton, Matt Shively, Tommy Miranda, Alisha Boe
RunTime: 1 hr 23 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Disturbing Scenes & Coarse Language)
Released By:  UIP
Official Website: http://www.paranormalmovie.com/

Opening Day: 25 October 2012

Synopsis:  Fourth installment of the horror smash hit Paranormal Activity.

Movie Review:

We’ll just say this from the get-go – this fourth addition to the surprisingly durable horror franchise is frightfully dull, and we’d advise even fans of the earlier movies to steer clear.

All franchises run out of new ideas after some time, but it seemed after ‘Paranormal Activity 3’ that directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman had somehow found a way to breathe new life into the series by exploring the genesis of the hauntings. Nonetheless, both directors seem clueless how to build on from the momentum established from their earlier film, so much so that the devil worship mythology set up previously becomes almost an afternote.

To be sure, the series had to find new ground after beginning with Katie, then moving on to her sister Kristi, and finally moving backwards in time to explore the childhood of both Katie and Kristi in the most recent instalment. So after a brief recap of the conclusion of ‘Paranormal Activity 2’ in which Katie kills her sister Kristi and abducts her nephew Hunter, writer Christopher Langdon jumps ahead to 2011 with a new family made up of Doug (Stephen Dunham) and Holly (Alexondra Lee) and their two children – Alex (Kathryn Newton) and Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp).

Otherwise perfectly normal, the family’s only misfortune is to be living across the street from single mother Katie and her young son Robbie (Brady Allen). After a domestic accident, Holly kindly opens their home to Robbie, and Alex begins to notice strange things happening around the house with his arrival. Those familiar with the previous films will recognise the similarities – moving furniture, loud footsteps, ghostly images, and self-levitating objects – and it seems that Joost and Schulman are content to merely rehash the elements that made the previous films so successful.

Aside from a nifty visual trick derived from using the Infra-Red (IR) function on the Xbox Kinect gaming accessory, the shots are awfully pedestrian and lack the novelty that some of the most terrifying scenes in ‘Paranormal Activity 3’ possess. In fact, Langdon offers little more than a half-hearted explanation where the found-footage is derived, so we are supposed to believe that there are several laptops around the house, all of which are able to set up recording video chat functions throughout the day.

Yet painfully little actually happens before the inevitable climax, and after a promising setup that introduces the various characters as well as Alex’s wisecracking (and surprisingly entertaining) boyfriend Ben (Matt Shively), there is close to an hour of monotonous waiting as the family gets spooked one by one. As if acknowledging that there are few genuine scares, Joost and Schulman rely the most on jump-scares here compared to previous instalments – and too many of such jolts consist of the family cat running in front of some recording device.

The movie only recovers from its lethargic pace at the end, when one of the family members we’re not saying who to avoid any spoilers) is inducted into the coven behind the devil worship responsible for the hauntings. But just when it gets exciting, the action stops, presumably to whet your appetite for the already announced ‘Paranormal Activity 5’ coming out next Halloween – and while there is nothing wrong with a franchise feeder of an ending, the filmmakers must have forgotten that it only works if you manage to convince your audience that the wait is worth their while.

In the case of ‘Paranormal Activity 4’, all they have done is to warn fans that the series may indeed have already reached its creative zenith with the last instalment. There is nothing here that you haven’t yet seen from any of the previous three movies, nor is it done any better than what its predecessors have – and if ‘all the activity has led to this’ as the tagline claims, then the only conclusion we can draw is that it has been much ado about nothing. 

Movie Rating:

(Utterly disappointing entry in the ‘Paranormal Activity’ franchise that is content to simply rehash old tricks and jump-scares to pass off as horror)

Review by Gabriel Chong