Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)
Directed by: Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost
Written by: Chad Feehan, Christopher Landon
Starring: Brady Allen, Kathryn Newton, Katie Featherstone, Matt Shively
Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)
(15) Running time: 88 minutes
Directors: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Writers: Christopher Landon, Chad Feehan
Starring: Kathryn Newton, Matt Shively, Katie Featherstone, Brady Allen
Reviewed by: Matt Wavish, official HCF critic
So the tagline reads “all the activity has led to this” as if Paranormal Activity 4 is intended as some sort of payoff, a final revelation that will wrap up the story nicely. Instead what do we get? More questions, a daft ending and a painfully obvious copout so that the inevitable Paranormal Activity 5 can grace our screens next Halloween. I wouldn’t say I feel totally cheated by this fourth film; however as a Paranormal Activity fan I do happen to feel ever so slightly annoyed.
See, what I would have really liked the franchise to have done was to go back even further, and answer the questions about Katie and her sisters Grandparents who were revealed at the end of Paranormal Activity 3, but instead here we jump forward five years after the events of Paranormal Activity 2 and we land in a new neighbourhood not yet affected by the ‘activity’. We are given a brief recap of how PA2 ended which gives the game away for this sequel almost instantly, and then we spend about an hour just waiting for the story to reveal what we already know, but I will not spoil it for you here. What we get is a new family, and we first meet fifteen year old Alex (Newton) as she films her little brother playing football: she loves her camera see, and will film pretty much everything (something which comes in rather handy considering this is a found footage flick!). Anyway, in the background of her video appears a young boy, and later on it turns out that he is a new addition to the neighbourhood and has arrived with his Mother. The boy is called Robbie (Allen), and the creepy little bastard is the highlight of the film. He likes to stare and gaze, and he naturally looks evil, so you can only presume he has bad intentions and that he will bring the ‘activity’. He does, and after his Mother is taken ill, Alex’s parent’s look after Robbie for a few days and the creepy goings on intensify, sort of.
Alex is aware something is up, and her and her sort of boyfriend (Shively) set up cameras all around the house to record the spooky goings on. This is brought on by the boyfriend cheekily filming Alex at night (“it was an accident!”) and catching a glimpse of Robbie up to some pretty weird stuff. Freaked out, Alex descends into deeper panic as the film moves along, yet her parents don’t seem to care at all when she raises her concerns, and instead she is happy just to keep on filming. It almost felt like the actors knew that this was a Paranormal Activity film, and that if they just kept on filming, eventually someone would see it: that’s how forced much of the film felt to me. There was not enough tension or urgency, and everyone came across as quite relaxed about the whole thing as if they pretty much expected it. That is not to say we don’t get some believable acting because we do, and the banter between the new and much younger couple of Alex and her boyfriend is often hilarious and clearly aimed at keeping the teen audience involved during the films slower moments. The pair behaves quite naturally and, at times, are a joy to watch, if a tad irritating. However you never really feel any sense of danger and the lack of involvement from the parents doesn’t help this at all. In all the previous films there was a real sense of something wrong, there was a panic and a real sense of terror from the majority of the cast, but Paranormal Activity 4 rarely gets that kind of character involvement. What made the previous films so great is that you felt scared because the characters were genuinely freaked out, but that is lacking here, massively.
What we end up with here is yet another collection of jump moments brought on by watching a camera set up in a room, or of someone’s mobile phone or laptop being carried around. The jumps are not very well executed, and give me reason to believe that this franchise has run out of ideas, and is running out of steam, fast. What really baffles me is that directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost gave the franchise a real kick up the ass with Paranormal Activity 3 after the good, but not great PA2, and I expected them to take things even further here. Instead they take things back to basics, but we have already been there and, from the reaction of the audience as well (I heard a lot of groans), I think fans are growing tired of it. Granted there are some cool gimmicks: the X-Box connecting dots light show seen in the trailers is very cool and gives the film some of its creepiest moments, and the use of laptops which can obviously be carried around are a nice touch. However there is none of the invention of the ‘moving’ camera on an electric fan base here, or the violence of the ‘activity’ in part 3 which hadn’t been seen before. Instead PA4 is happy to use the same tactics that have come before, and rarely did the scares deliver. Half of them actually lead to nothing which was very, VERY annoying. In fact, probably the film’s best scare came from the cat jumping in front of the camera. Also, and a trick which proved to test my patience over and over, some scares were achieved by the video jumping so that a character would suddenly jump from one side of the room to another while a loud thud was heard!
However, at times the tension does build nicely, and there is no denying that in all honesty if you are going to watch the fourth in a franchise built on this sort of thing, then you should know what to expect. The wonderful rumbling sounds that come across like an earthquake to indicate a ‘presence’ continue to achieve menace, and you can’t help but have fun watching the screen, looking in the dark corners to see something moving, and on that basis the film does deliver. Things go horribly wrong come the end though: andwhat appears to have been rushed, or a sudden change of heart from the makers ends a confusing mess. A design created so wonderfully in Grave Encounters is used to emphasise evil (trust me, you’ll know what I mean when you see it), and just as the film all of a sudden becomes interesting, it stops. Now, while I fully appreciate the formula of ‘found footage’, this has to be one of the most frustrating endings I have ever seen because even though it was messy, it was the first time the film genuinely excited me.
Now, it is also worth noting that while the majority of the audience couldn’t leave quick enough, and not looking at all happy, I stayed to the end to catch a teaser for the Latino themed Paranormal Activity coming soon, so stick around after the credits if you want to see it.
Paranormal Activity 4 though is a disaster really. It was not all that scary, and for the first time in the franchise I found myself bored and quite frankly fed up. There were only so many build ups to nothing I could take before I felt like screaming at the cinema screen to deliver a genuine shock. There is no doubt fans will still have fun with this, but I feel it has run its course and doesn’t have anything new to give. There is a rule that if it aint broke then don’t fix it, but here sadly it is broke and possibly can’t be fixed, and I don’t think we need another one unless they plan on a major, major shift in both plot and design. This very well might be the franchises end, and it pains me to say it (believe it or not I love these films), but Paranormal Activity appears to have nothing left, no more tricks up its sleeve, and no more ideas. Shame
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