Evil may never sleep, but by Paranormal Activity 4 it was looking pretty darned tired. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is not actually the fifth film in Oren Peli's near billion-dollar grossing series (PA5 opens next Halloween), but a sister project. Can a parallel picture reinvigorate a flagging franchise?
Kind of, actually.
Writer-director Christopher Landon, son of the late Little House on the Prairie legend Michael, has turned in a clever screenplay that manages to touch base with each of previous instalments. Established fans can expect to coo "Oh, look, it's that girl" or "Oh, wait, that's where those tapes got to". A neat final sequence ties everything together and points toward future midquels, interquels and prequels.
In the meantime, this solid genre entry relocates Paranormal Activity's standardised spooky shenanigans in a Californian Latino neighbour, a move that allows for interesting cultural textures and the possibility of a showdown between evil and gangbangers. It helps that the central players are teenagers and that demonic possession, at first, translates into superpowers not unlike the ones found in Chronicle.
Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) has just graduated from high school when his BF, Arturo (Carlos Pratts), notices class valedictorian Oscar (Richard Cabral) hanging around with the strange, witchy woman who lives at the bottom of their apartment complex.
When she is murdered, Oscar becomes the prime suspect. His classmates soon investigate, camera ever rolling for that found-footage sheen. Cue mysterious bite marks, odd behaviours and things that go bump in the night.
Happily, the characters have more appeal and definition than many of the occupants of previous instalments. The atmospherics are appropriately amplified. A few more jump-scares wouldn't have gone amiss; there's a stretch in the middle that might have been improved by the mantra "What Would James Wan Do?". But as spin-offs go, this is closer to Frasier than it is to Baywatch Nights. And as Paranormal Activity flicks go, it improves on part four. Phew.
