Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

The Paranormal Activity franchise began with a simple and ingenious premise, as Oren Peli decided to shoot an ultra-cheap found footage horror film about all the things that may nor may not happen in our homes while we sleep. It played on a universal fear, and it was a terrifying little movie that was able to burrow its way into the minds of audiences everywhere and leave a deep impact. Then somewhere along the way these movies stopped being about the inherent scariness of 3:00 a.m. and started focusing on a fear far less universal: an evil demon lady wreaking havoc all over suburban California. The fourth and latest installment to come out of the Paranormal Activity processing plant is still fundamentally scary at points, but most of the “gotcha” moments are too predictable and it continues the series’ ill-advised journey into the Katie Featherston mythology. That has never been and will never be interesting.

At least this installment gets us out of a Featherston household, for the most part. This time we get to meet another camera-obsessed family, with our main point of entry being the teenage Alex (Kathryn Newton), who spends a great deal of time chatting on the Internet with her boyfriend Ben (Matt Shively) as the kids do. Things start to get strange when a quiet, odd little boy moves in across the street named Robbie (Brady Allen) . One night, Robbie’s mom is rushed to the hospital and it’s up to Alex’s family to watch him. Robbie then develops a close—perhaps too close—relationship with Alex’s brother Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp). The spookiness becomes greater and greater all while Alex’s parents (Alexondra Lee and Stephen Dunham) stand idly by. Will things continue to escalate until we reach a gruesome and abrupt conclusion? You betcha!

There are still a couple of things to admire about these movies, and there’s no denying that directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman bring some level of craft to the proceedings. They joined the series for its third installment, and it certainly looks like they’re going to be the men in charge for the foreseeable future. They’re dealing with a familiar product here, obviously, but they are very smart when it comes to framing and shot composition in these movies, which is crucial. Even if we know the basic beats of the whole story by now, they’re awfully skilled at milking suspense simply from what may or may not be in frame. They used this to terrific effect in Paranormal Activity 3 with the oscillating FanCam, which created one of the most haunting and genuinely shocking moments in the series. The rest of the movie was whatever, but one awesome moment is better than nothing.

Joost and Schulman take a mighty stab at discovering the next FanCam here, but they are never able to quite find it. The newest innovation is the KinectCam, which projects various dots all over the living room that can be seen when the camera is on night vision. All this gives us is a few ostensibly chilling moments where we may see some spirits moving in the room, but it never is used to give us a shock on the level of the falling furniture in PA3. It’s just there. It’s spooky, but never truly scary.

Movies like these thrive on the fake scare; a “BOO!” moment where there actually turns out to be no danger at all. The first two installments had such moments, of course, but I feel like Joost and Schulman have amped up these fake scares far too much. Their Paranormal Activity movies would be better served to let some scenes play out without the patented extended silence followed by a sudden door slam or whatever. The original Paranormal Activity is not a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it escalates the horror brilliantly with each passing scene. This means that much of the first third is dedicated to a lot of talking and nothing particularly spooky happening. The real bad stuff comes later. Joost and Schulman pummel you with so many jabs that it lessens the impact of the scares when they become real. If you really want to scare us, you want us to trick the audience into lowering our guard. That's when you pounce. Their method is to startle the audience early and often, and that ultimately makes the “BOO!” moments more predictable than genuinely terrifying.

My biggest problem with the franchise actually has nothing to do with Joost or Schulman. Going into the second movie, Oren Peli and his fellow producers had a chance to turn the Paranormal Activity films into something of a found footage anthology series. Continue using the format, sure, but attack a different premise every time. Instead, Peli and company decided to explore the family and origins of Katie Featherston. Bluntly put, I could give a crap. She was far more terrifying when she went unexplained, and throwing her family life at us just makes everything all the more predictable. Also, these films aren’t even doing much to expand on the mythology. It doesn’t get much more complicated than “spooky things happen and oh yeah Katie shows up at the end to snap some necks.” The franchise would be best served to abandon this Katie Featherston nonsense and take the films in a different direction. Featherston is a fine actress, but her work in these films has ceased to be a mutually beneficial relationship. Well, except for her bank account, surely.

The good news is that the powers that be may be forced to think outside the box in the near future. Even among those who have continued to like the series, Paranormal Activity 4 is pretty definitive proof that the current formula is starting to run out of gas. It’s still a skillfully directed and effectively creepy little movie, but most of the originality and thrill is gone. There was once a time when these films were always a couple steps ahead of us. Now it’s hard to imagine anyone not being right there with it the entire way.

Grade: C+