Movie Scum

Even though Paranormal Activity 4 has the same goals and hits the same notes as its predecessors, it is the weakest entry in the series by far. As another year passes and the already thin concept is stretched more transparent, the filmmakers stubbornly refuse to jettison the established storyline even though the weighty backstory is a hindrance. The main focus this time is teenaged Alex and her family who experience weird happenings after a young boy comes to stay with them. Alex convinces her boyfriend to set up the family’s endless supply of Macbooks to record everything even though that footage is more for our benefit than Alex’s. While I have enjoyed the series up until now to varying degrees, PA4 offers nothing new and worse, it is rather boring. There are a handful of decent jump scares and one extended uneasy scene but the rest is simply filler while we wait for those. The lengthy buildup to shocks and scares doesn’t work this time around since we know what to expect and t...

At this point, the Paranormal Activity series is almost critic-proof since it is dirt-cheap to produce, brings in fists full of dollars and is generally well-received by audiences. With the departure of the Saw franchise last year, October needed another big, R-rated series to take its place to win over the hard earned cash of horror-loving moviegoers. I said in the review of PA2: “It is pretty safe to say that if you liked the first PA, you will probably like this one too.” Amend that to say the first two PA films and you have my excerpt for Parnormal Activity 3 . That isn’t a bad thing … unless you really hated the preceding films. The formula for these stories are pretty simple: a family experiences some traumatic experience leading to the dominant male of the household placing a camera, or cameras, around the house to document something or another. This film sets up the loving family of Julie, mother of Katie and Kristi, and her boyfriend Dennis who conveniently is a wedding p...

After the original was released and grossed roughly 7000x its budget at the ticket counters alone, it didn’t take long for a sequel to be greenlit. Now with the Saw series allegedly over, Paramount has positioned Paranormal Activity to take the crown for late October horror franchises that are likely to get beaten into the ground. It is pretty safe to say that if you liked the first PA, you will probably like this one too. But that is mostly because it is the same exact movie as the first with different choices in how it is shot and more characters. And a dog. And a monster robot pool cleaner. While I didn’t dislike Paranormal Activity 2 , I cannot really see where it can go from here for the already planned part three or beyond. The first worked well because it was different, not so much in plot or execution, but from what we were seeing at the time. The gimmick though is gone and it is almost as if the producers decided to remake the first movie to throw the audience off. After ...

Hollywood is a funny animal. Film studios are willing to drop millions of dollars on movies with horrible movies starring big actors, big gambles that may or may not pay off, and run of the mill sequels that have little redeeming cinematic value but are a sure win at the box office. Yet a movie like Paranormal Activity comes along and flounders for years on the festival circuit (hence the 2007 production year) before finally being picked up and begrudgingly released to theaters throughout the country. If you follow movies at all, you know the gist of the story. Our couple, Micah and Katie, have been noticing some strange activity in their home. Tech geek Micah decides to get a camera to not only annoy the hell out of Katie in the bathroom but to capture any evidence of the strange occurrences. As the entire film takes place inside the house, mostly with just Micah and Katie, we are confined with them as the incidents occur more frequently and more violently leading to many scene...