Paranormal Activity - Next Of Kin

Unfound Footage

Paranormal Activity -
Next Of Kin
USA 2021
Directed by William Eubank
Blumhouse

Paranormal Activity - Next Of Kin is, allegedly, the seventh in the much loved Paranormal Activity franchise (well, eight if you count the original sequel, Paranormal Activity 2 - Tokyo Night, which I still haven’t been able to find with English subtitles anywhere so I can watch the thing). Now I know it’s bad to write a review of a film right after you’ve been hugely let down by it so I went away and digested what I’d seen, along with a meal, before sitting down to write this one up.

For the record, I love this franchise and I had a blast with absolutely all of them apart from the fifth in the series, The Marked Ones (reviewed here). That one was absolutely terrible because the main protagonists were all unlikeable thugs who you were just hoping would die and drop out of the movie... although even that one had its uses in that it established the concept, which they really ran with the in the brilliant sixth movie, Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension (reviewed here), of the fact that Toby, the demon who is being raised by the coven of witches, could also travel in time.

Well, despite my obvious issues with that terrible fifth entry in the series I’m here to tell you that, Paranormal Activity - Next Of Kin is... way worse than that one was. I mean, it’s not really a terrible movie in and of itself and, frankly, it has some intense and effective jump scares at some points but, honestly, why did they even try and pretend this is a Paranormal Activity film?

It took maybe no more than two minutes to get me really angry and, I have to say, even though I saw it a few hours ago now, my blood is still boiling on this one. Around about two minutes in, the formerly first person POV camera, which is the way these things fake the feel of found footage, is suddenly enhanced with maybe as much as two seconds of a shot of the guy on the camera so we can see what he looks like. Really? There’s no other camera trained on him... it just throws in this kind of ‘character establishing shot’ to, I dunno, enhance the feel? Then, maybe five minutes in after the main protagonists of the movie, played by Emily Bader, Roland Buck III and Dan Lippert get into a van, the camera shows a series of top down shots, looking at the vehicle as it wends its way through the countryside from various viewpoints... even going so far as to add some music. I mean... what the f***!

I recently saw a pseudo found footage movie called The Deep House (reviewed here) which took a similarly blasé approach in the way it was drip feeding in obvious third person viewpoints into the picture but I cut it some slack because it wasn’t actually claiming to be a found footage movie and, also, it didn’t have the weight of the legacy of six successful ‘found footage phenomenon’ films behind it. And I’m sorry but, the same can’t be said of Paranormal Activity - Next Of Kin by a long chalk.
Various other ways it destroys any credibility it was trying for and abandoning any pretension that it’s continuing the ‘found footage theme’, while obviously still trying to fool the slower witted in the audience that it actually is, are numerous and equally offensive. And, yes, I just went on Twitter (probably months before this post got published) and it obviously did somehow fool the less discerning element of its core audience because one guy was tweeting that the film has nothing to do with the other movies with the only similarity being that it’s found footage. Nope... wrong! It's not POV at all. How can you miss this stuff?

So, yeah, the film does have some intense scare moments  to shred your nerves but it’s almost like its fighting against itself to try and guarantee the audience is popped out of the experience. For example, some scary moments towards the end of the movie are actually scored with some kind of musical stingers. I mean, I was almost got caught up in the moment until they did that. And they also have some slow motion shots in the movie which they try and explain away by showing how the camera can also capture slow motion so that, when an intense scene like someone getting his throat torn out comes up, they can linger on it in slow motion... totally pulling you out of the movie again. Why they try and justify it as an ‘in camera’ trick is anybody’s guess because, from many times earlier in the film... the cat is out of the bag, so to speak.

Another thing is the use of masks in the film. It’s set during the coronavirus pandemic but the characters in the restaurant at the start aren’t wearing masks. Fair enough, maybe they’re a ‘bubble’ but when they go out into the parking lot to meet a stranger, including hugging etc, there are still no masks or social distancing. And then, almost as an afterthought, the characters slip their Covid masks on and they all get into the car... where they all take their masks off for some reason and that’s the last we see of masks in the movie, I think. This seems particularly stupid and, I guess in a way, explains how the movie is populated with protagonists who decide to pursue the most stupid, life threatening options available to them... instead of retreating. I guess if they’re stupid enough to ignore the Covid then they’re stupid enough to somehow position themselves into the perilous situations they end up in.

Lastly, I was watching hard but I couldn’t find any way in which this one relates to any of the previous Paranormal Activity movies. There’s no mention of Toby, nor any of the human companions or victims he’s been around. I was hoping, since the previous movie in the series had given him a human form to inhabit the terrestrial world in, that this one would be a continuation of the concept. But no, this one is nothing to do with the previous story arc and it’s just another in a list of things of which I can’t forgive the movie for.

And I don’t want to dwell on it by writing anymore about it either. Paranormal Activity - Next Of Kin is well acted, has some intense scenes and scares and is, frankly, absolutely nothing to do with the other parts of the franchise. It’s a blatant money grab and this series should have been treated better... especially with the original director on board as producer. If you’re into horror movies, have not seen any of the previous Paranormal Activity films and are not invested with the film actually following the, really not so hard to follow conventions of the ‘found footage’ genre, then you will possibly have a good time with this. For everyone else I would say, stay away from this one. It’s a heartbreaking and disrespectful piece of fluff.

Verónica

The Vay Ve Ver

Verónica
2017 Spain Directed by Paco Plaza
London Film Festival Monday 15th October

So the fourth of my 2017 London Film Festival screenings was Verónica, a new film directed by Paco Plaza, who was the co-director of the first two excellent [REC•] movies and solo director of the third of the four (which I personally thought was slightly less successful when it jettisoned the ‘found footage’ first person POV style of filmmaking a little way into the running time). The film is purported (according to the various captions at the start and end of the movie... more on those later) to be inspired by the unknown events which build up to the lead detective of a police team arriving at a potential ‘crime scene’ and going on to  file the first official report in Spanish history to go on record saying the investigating team were a witness to paranormal activity. Now, I’d kinda like to believe that’s true and several sources on the internet seem to be taking that claim as fact but... I can’t find anything on the real story on the internet either so... not 100% sure I’d take that with anything less than a pinch of salt but, on the other hand, just because I can’t find anything about it in English on the internet, doesn’t mean to say there’s not loads about it in Spanish, I guess.

Now I’ve got a lot of respect for this director because, a number of years ago now, he did something with that first [REC•] film that I really wasn’t expecting from anyone. That is, he took the zombie genre (well, not quite zombies but close enough) and made it frightening again. Well, I say again but I’m not really certain the zombie genre ever really was that frightening, to be honest and... yeah, he made a zombie film which was genuinely scary, rather than just being another ‘body count’ movie. So that was good.

Here he takes the ‘demonic thing summoned by people messing around with a Ouija board’ genre and, although I have to say that he didn’t really succeed in making this film in any way scary, he did make a really fun film which hits up on all the genre clichés and which had some good one liners in it... which, I’m happy to say, had the audience laughing out loud.

Set in the early 1990s, the film has a strong opening which is very similar to the ‘journey to the apartment block in the original [REC•] in that it seems to be shot first person and it’s a rush of chaos as the police respond to the panicked phone call for urgent help, which you hear on the soundtrack as their vehicles rush through the streets to their destination. The lead detective bursts in and we see a shot of the title character, played astonishingly believably by actress Sandra Escacena, her face in close up, head bent back as she screams... except it’s not a scream, it is a yawn and the soundtrack bleeds off to reveal that this is her waking up one morning, three days earlier.

It’s a nice transitional shot and what Plaza does here, since it’s obvious he’s using this ‘documentary style’ opening as a framing device, is tell you that, as an audience you’re going to have to survive three nights of paranormal scare tactics before you catch up to that bookend sequence. And he doesn’t lose any time in setting up the story. Veronica is the oldest of her three siblings - two sisters and one brother - and she has to get them, and herself, ready for school each day because her mother works truly unsociable hours in a nearby cafe. However, Veronica misses her dead father and wants to attempt to communicate with him so, while all the rest of the children and staff of the convent school which they go to are up on the roof watching the eclipse, Veronica and two friends go to a kind of abandoned basement to have a ‘Ouija session’. Now, even my own mother instilled in me, from an early age, not to mess around with those things based on her own experience of one and, right enough, in best movieland tradition, things start going wrong for Veronica right from the start and she lets in some kind of demonic presence to do all the usual horror movie clichés for the rest of the movie. 

As I said earlier, the film is not breaking any original ground here but it is nice to have a pulpy horror yarn which is as entertaining as this one. It feels like one of those ‘comfort horror’ movies you can watch when you’re on your own and, helpfully, all the main actors, mostly children, are all very good in this. We also get a nicely spooky turn from Consuelo Trujillo as the blind nun who seems to be able to watch what’s going on anyway (she even watches the eclipse without the use of her eyes) and who is nicknamed by the students as Sister Death. She, alone, of all the adults in the story, can see that a demonic entity is walking with Veronica and she’s a great character. There’s a nice throwaway line here as one of the other nuns guides her out of the basement which neither Veronica or Sister Death should be in and Death says something along the lines of... “You can find the answers in the book!” To which the other nun adds, “There. You see what good advice she gives?”... which got another  big laugh from the audience, I can tell you.

There’s some nice photography involved such as shots of the stars stuck onto the ceiling of Veronica’s bedroom superimposed over what else is going on and the camera does the usual roving around Veronica’s apartment to make the audience look for things in the background, which seems to be a common element of contemporary horror films. Like I said, Plaza’s not exactly reinventing the wheel here but he is, at least, making sure that wheel is a well oiled piece of machinery. Enough to get you to the end destination in style.

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say about Verónica. The characters are sympathetic and you really don’t want to see anything bad happen to them. There are a few jump scares, some of which did somehow manage to catch out some of the audience and the bookend sequence at the end continues Plaza’s preoccupation with the documentary feel of the piece with... allegedly... the actual, real life  photographs of the aftermath of the 'event' in the apartment that inspired this movie used as accompanying illustrations on the end credits. I didn’t realise that until afterwards because, to me, the pictures looked just the same as the environments in which the film takes place so... good job to whoever did that, I guess. At the end of the day, though, inspired by real life or not, scary or not, the film is a solidly entertaining horror tale and there’s always room for that. It’s certainly more interesting than a lot of the ‘teen horror’ tales which have been doing the rounds just lately so... maybe take a look at this one if it gets any kind of cinema release in your country.

Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension 3D

Wheatley Hell’s 
Going On Here?

Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension 3D
2015 USA
Directed by Gregory Plotkin
UK cinema release print.

Regular readers will know that I have a soft spot for the Paranormal Activity films. The first of these (reviewed here) was not really all that scary but fits into my realm of 'comfort horror'. Paranormal Activity 2 - 4 (reviewed here, here and here)  were pretty scary and, as each new film was released, they added another compelling puzzle piece to an overall  back story arc that has been used to drive the franchise on, pretty successfully, since the first installment. At this point I should probably point out that I don’t include the original sequel to the first Paranormal Activity film, the Japanese horror movie Paranormal Activity 2 - Tokyo Nights because, amazingly, the producers have done a really good job at suppressing a release of that, now unofficial, sequel over here or in the US and I still haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy with English subtitles. it follows a completely different plot avenue from the US Paranormal Activity 2 and I really want to see what the Japanese did with it. I shall keep looking out for it though.

The US films are not set in a chronological order but, as the story unfolds, you realise that there's a good reason why this is so, especially with the inclusion in the fifth installment, the dreadful Paranormal Activity - The Marked Ones (reviewed here) of the concept that various characters in the Paranormal Activity universe can travel back and forth in time. Now this is interesting because, as far as I can remember, the release of Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension was stalled for a couple of years to make way for the shooting and release of The Marked Ones and it seems to me now that the only reason this could be so, was that test audiences (be they members of the public or part of private studio screenings back in 2013) may have been confused by the time travel element in this movie but, honestly, although I originally assumed that this was why that fifth film was needed, I can honestly say that you’d have to be... well...  really not very smart if you couldn’t work that out for yourself by the things which are happening in this one, since the film straddles mostly just two realities (or three if you count the titular plain of existence) - that of the year when Katie and her sister were taken in by ‘the coven’ in the past and also the current part of the story playing out, the year 2013... which gives me further circumstantial evidence that this was, at least in part but probably in whole, in the can by the original projected 2013 release date.

Now, the thing which was driving me nuts about this one before I went to see it was that it’s being presented in 3D. What the heck? Now you have to think about this. The movies are found footage horror films making use of whatever camera technology they are purportedly being recorded on... mostly VHS in this one because it includes the identity of the finders of the tapes which you saw being discovered in the opening of one of the former episodes... I forget which one. So how do you get away with justifying a 3D release of a Paranormal Activity film when the whole point of these things is they’re supposed to look like they are documentary style found footage recorded on the hoof?

Well, as it happens, I forgave them almost immediately because, like the majority of the series, this film brings in a slightly newer element which elevates proceedings just a little more than the last one and, in this one, it’s the discovery of a souped up camera which has twice as much innards as it’s supposed to have and which seems to have been specifically created to capture things happening in a spirit realm, invisible to the naked eye or a normal camera, superimposed over the real world images as they manifest themselves. So think shots of eerie ectoplasm beings appearing whenever the films ‘star demon’ Toby comes out to play, so to speak. So most of the footage in the movie is still flat but, whenever The Ghost Dimension starts manifesting whenever it’s this particular camera picking up the footage, the ghost parts are actually projected on a 3D layer... accompanied by some appropriate sound design to heighten the audiences awareness that something spooky is about to happen while simultaneously conditioning the audience, Pavlov style, that whenever they hear these sounds or see these ectoplasmic 3D black shapes... something awful could happen, so be afraid! Of course, all this would have gone down a lot better if it had made its original 2013 release date, when 3D hadn’t totally lost the popularity Hollywood wants it to have, in order to justify the ticket price hike but... at least the team behind the film have gone to some lengths to find a decent spin on the gimmick for this movie... which I think lets it off the hook somewhat.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that this is a real return to form for the series after that last, plug in installment. This one has a group of characters consisting of people who you really can sympathise with again and who you can hope make it through the film fairly unscathed... rather than the bunch of foul mouthed  street thugs you just don’t care about in The Marked Ones. Of course, I’m not going to tell you if everyone or, indeed, anyone survives this installment but... it’s a Paranormal Activity film. What do you think? You need to go find out.

The film is somewhat formulaic, it has to be said, following the slow burn format of the previous installments with the scares getting increasingly more alarming and violent as Toby and the gang ramp up to a finale where all hell breaks loose... almost literally in this case. There’s also a nice return, in this one, to the old Dennis Wheatley school of horror... which manifests itself when a local priest gets involved with the family and friends who are trying to protect their Toby-obsessed daughter. So, yeah, you get the old chalk symbol circle sequence where everybody has to stand in said circle and must not... whatever they hear or see... leave the circle which protects them from the demonic forces at work.

Okay... so how do you think that ones going to work out in a Paranormal Activity movie? Someone always leaves the circle of protection in a horror tale, right?

Let’s just say that the final confrontation between the priest and Toby, kickstarts the usual chaotic and scary concluding sequences of the film and, I have to tell you, the writers/producers/director goes way past the level they usually do at this point in these movies. You will, finally, get some good glimpses of Toby and the demonic deaths of any/all/some of the characters in this one (like I’m going to tell you) are all done in a much more over-the-top fashion which, in a lot of cases, makes full use of the 3D format. It possibly gets a little silly in this final pièce de résistance of the movie but it’s swings and roundabouts averaging out between the “blimey, that scared the pants off me, I did not expect that” moments and the “okay, 3D demonic impaling... whatever” moments and I can really forgive the film-makers any indulgences with the last quarter of an hour of this movie because it’s just so much scary fun.

The creator of the franchise, Oren Peli, has gone on record that this will be the last in the series but... hang on, you can’t stop it here! The final message we take away from this one is pretty grim and I really do want to see more of this franchise. I don’t think the story is done here and I would so much like to see a good guy/gal ‘anti-coven’ group of heroes go into a final showdown with Toby, the coven and, presumably, the devil made flesh etc. This is like where they left it at the end of The Last Exorcism Part 2 (reviewed by me here) and I was pumped up to see where the next one would go... which didn’t materialise. I want to see this series’ equivalent of the original Omen trilogy’s The Final Conflict (reviewed by me here) where there’s a huge showdown between the forces of darkness and light, over one or two movies. I don’t even care who wins... I just want to see it. I think this film needs to maybe make a heck of a lot of money and wipe out the bad box office of the unnecessary fifth installment to somehow give the studio a hand in reconsidering their options at this point.

The one thing that I found maybe dissapointing is that this is the first of the movies not to feature an adult version of the Katie character and played by the original actress. We certainly hear about what she’s been up to in 2013 and we certainly see a lot of her as a young ‘un... but no actual appearances in her adult guise in this one, I’m afraid to say. Which would have been a nice touch when all hell starts breaking loose in this one, I feel.

Regardless, my final words on Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension are... this is another great entry into a seriously cool set of movies which actually make full use of the, possibly overused, modern cliché of the ‘found footage horror’ movie. It’s scary, heart racing fun for people who like to go to see these kinds of films and if you’re a fan of the Paranormal Activity series... essential viewing. If you got disheartened after that last movie in the series, you don’t have anything to worry about here... it’s back on track and is especially well worth a watch at the cinema in 3D because it’s used to enhance a plot point. And, like I said, I really hope this one does the numbers because I really want to see another sequel. A truly great movie, too, to spend this Halloween at the cinema with. Go see it soonest.

Paranormal Persuasion

Paranormal Activity 2009

US Directed by Oren Peli

Icon DVD Region 2

This has those spoiler things in it again... gosh, I think I must be mellowing out to spoiler warnings in my old age. If you haven’t seen this movie you are duly warned!

Now that the time has come when this movie has done all the rounds and has hit the sales and can be picked up in places like Tescos pretty cheaply, I thought it was obviously time for me to re-watch and hopefully re-evaluate Paranormal Activity because my wallet kindly told me that the time was right to do so.

I remember seeing this a couple of weeks before it came out on general release at the cinema where it played as a preview, bizarrely, at my local cinema (although given that my local is a crappy multiplex then it must have been playing in preview at something like the Frightfest way before I saw it is my guess). Anyway, I digress. When I say, I remember seeing it - blah di blah di blah - what I really mean to say is... I remember three specific things about it that stick in my mind... and two of those three were fairly negative.

This is what I remember about it from the first time around...

1. I’d seen the trailer telling me it was the scariest movie since the scariest scarifying things in movies since the dawn of time were scaring up publicity, and I remember sitting in the audience ten minutes before the movie started thinking... Hmmm... this movie is mostly only about two people and it’s mostly limited to their bedroom for most of the action, which is in itself recorded on a video camera as the main plot crutch - not that I have a problem about movies which feature two people in a bedroom shot on video camera... I've seen plenty of those kinds of movies in my time :-). However, there are really not very many ways in which a movie with those parameters could possibly end when you come to think of it, are there? So, I figured rationally to myself, the girl will get “taken over” by the ghost/poltergeist/or demon or whatever this is at the end and probably kill her lover and then, since this is the 21st Century now and the filmmakers will feel necessary to give the less subtle, dumbed down teeny horror demographic of the audience (which to be fair to them is who they’re aiming at anyway) an extra jolt, they’ll probably have her/it coming for the camera as the last part of the last shot.

2. My “scariest” horror movie is the old 1963 Robert Wise adaptation of The Haunting (based on Shirley Jackson’s excellent novel, The Haunting of Hill House) and so, frankly, Paranormal Activity was not the least bit scary to me and I was quite surprised that all those old, formulaic and cliched things they were doing in it was being not only accepted but was actually doing its job on the audience in question.

3. I remember the audience I was with, which was packed with groups of teenagers, getting really frightened and yelling helpful tips to the characters at the screen. And that’s where I got my entertainment from Paranormal Activity the first time around... incredulously watching the audience reaction going on around me. About three quarters of the way through the movie, one young lady, and I have never seen such a violent reaction to a movie in my life before this, actually ran from near the front of the audience, literally screaming loudly out of her mind in terror as she fled for the exit. And I mean ran. I couldn’t move that fast if I wanted to!

But for all that negative stuff, it didn’t fail to impress me. Why? Because if you can juggle all those cliched, stock horror tricks around and still scare an audience to that level... then you know what you are doing with film, to a certain extent (in much the same way that the original version of The Descent used all those same old cheap tricks... but that one actually did scare me too. Just not as much as The Haunting in its 1963 incarnation.).

Looking at it on DVD was a much more serene experience in terms of audience reaction... the two people I was with didn’t find this one scary either... but then neither are they likely to see their teenage years again.

I think the thing that disappointed me most about the movie was that I was absolutely right about the way the film was going to end. You could see it coming a mile off (in my case just from watching the trailer and thinking about the limitations of the crew) and it will be interesting to see if the upcoming sequel will be able to give us a different kind of ending to the one we’ve already seen in the first one... in much the same way as that other fairly recent “first person shooter camera eye” movie [REC 2] was able to successfully build on the first movie and give us a hopeful set up for a third installment.

I probably shouldn’t be so harsh about the ending of the movie... the DVD also has the option of watching it with an alternative ending and it’s clear that, while in the alternate version the movie has a more definitive ending and sense of closure for the film, it wasn’t as sequel friendly as the ending it was released with and I suspect, once the film was cut together and tested with an audience, the producers could already feel that sense of “ker-ching” in the air and wanted a franchise possibility.

Either way, it makes no difference to me why they did it because, as obvious as the end of the movie is... I think they chose the right one to finish their film with.

Would I recommend picking up Paranormal Activity as a DVD purchase? Well probably not unless you have a lot of friends dropping by all at once. This is a film where you need to be part of a larger audience if you want the frights and creepy overtures of the characters to take full effect on you. Paranormal Activity is definitely an activity which is best undertaken as a collective experience.