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.

Underwater

Flash, Bang, Wallop! 
Water Picture.

Underwater
2020 USA Directed by William Eubank
UK cinema release print.

Warning: A big spoiler on the ending 
in here, which I’ll flag when it comes up. 

Okay, so by far my favourite movie I saw this weekend was Underwater, which... was absolutely less interesting and arguably less original than the other two (The Lighthouse, reviewed here and Birds Of Prey - The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn, reviewed here) but made up for in sheer entertainment value what those other two lacked. And yeah, this movie was shot three years ago and has been languishing at the studio it was made, Twentieth Century Fox (the last film to bear that name) due to, among other things, the company’s acquisition by Disney.

Yeah, so let out a big groan, perhaps, as I tell you that Underwater is, not so much like The Abyss (as you might suspect it to be) but much more like a seafaring version of an Alien movie (not quite Aliens and the one with the tightest analogy to this would perhaps be the fourth, Alien Resurrection, I think) cross pollinated with The Poseidon Adventure. I wasn’t expecting much from this and it did have a little problem with the ending, I felt but, yeah, like I said it was my favourite of the three I saw this weekend and I had a lot of fun with it.

The film’s main protagonist, Norah, is played by Kristen Stewart... an actress who I’ve only recently discovered (after seeing her a year or so ago in Personal Shopper, reviewed here). She is pretty cool as a technical expert on the crew of a deep sea, submarine station diving rig, one of a family of such stationery vessels situated between 5 and 7 miles beneath the sea. The film starts off with her monologue on the soundtrack, reliving the experiences of her tale to the audience and it’s this specific viewpoint where my one big problem with the film starts up... but I’ll come back to that later. So...

Norah tells us the story from a first person viewpoint and it has a really strong opening... all that stuff you see in the trailer where the water bursts through the vessel and everyone is just trying to survive it all takes place within the first five minutes of the film. That’s just the set up. Two survivors, including Norah, try to get to a less damaged part of the vessel to safety, picking up a few of the crew as they work their way through wrecked areas that they shouldn’t even be able to fit in and while the audience is all holding their breath (I’m assuming everybody else watching movies with scenes underwater do this, it’s not just me right?). The various actors and actresses include T. J. Miller, Vincent Cassel, Jessica Henwick and John Gallagher Jr. (who you may remember from 10 Cloverfield Lane, reviewed here) and, frankly, there’s not a bad one among them. Sure they go through all the clichés you’d expect as they try to plot a course going down to the ocean bed so they can walk many miles to the next base and also figure out what kind of earthquake activity has wrecked their, now less than airtight, submersible home... but that’s okay.

Of course, it’s not long before they realise they are being stalked by the real culprit behind the damage and destruction of, not just their vessel but all the others. Yes, that’s right, a bunch of aggressively violent, sea creature predators who want to eat the human contents of said vessel for breakfast.

And it’s about everything you’d expect from this kind of thrill a minute horror movie but the point is, it accomplishes the little it sets out to do really well. I don’t know who William Eubank is but the direction and whole feel of the film is that someone’s taken an old, much used template and replicated it in a really competent and watchable manner. And you really can’t complain about that with the kind of movie it is, I think.

So yeah, good acting, some nice photography and a score by Marco Beltrami and Brandon Roberts which is good enough to make me lament that there’s been no proper CD release of the thing, just a stupid electronic download. So I guess I won’t be listening to that one as a stand alone then.

Okay, big spoiler warning right now.

Now, normally at this point I would tell you that the film has no surprises but, unfortunately, by the end of the movie is does pull out one surprise but... yeah, it’s not the best thought through surprise as far as I’m concerned. All the way through we’ve been following Kirsten Stewart’s character as she rescues various colleagues from death in various states of undress, finishing in something which is basically just a bikini (did I mention this movie had some spectacular visuals?) but at the end, she pulls a fast one on the last two of her surviving colleagues who she’s finally managed to get into escape pods, surface bound and then sacrifices herself to save their lives. Um... no... what? Yeah, so the person who has been telling us her story on the soundtrack, I think even in past tense for a lot of the film, dies at the end. Frankly, that makes no sense unless you believe she’s telling her tall tale from somewhere ethereal like heaven so, yeah, no marks for the writers here. This isn't Sunset Boulevard.

End of spoiler.

However, regardless of the ‘quite possibly accidental’ trick ending, Underwater is a solid ‘monsters in the wet’ movie and if you are into those kinds of horror/action pieces, well I think you’ll probably have a good time with it. It has it’s moments and with her ‘shaved head and not much else look’ in a lot of the scenes, Kristen Stewart manages to carry the movie along with her obvious enthusiasm for the role. This is never going to be anybody’s favourite horror movie and it’s not even that jumpy most of the time but it’s a highly competently put together survival horror yarn and I’ve got no problems recommending this to people. Water way to go.