Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
The first film was a masterpiece, the second boring, the third had a good story but no scares and I think this fourth one really puts the nail in the coffin. Basically what we have takes place five years after Katie and Hunter went missing. They turn up living next door to a couple who has a teenage daughter who begins to notice strange things in the house. I won't spoil anymore for a couple reasons. One reason is that if you do decide to watch the film you won't want to know too much. The second reason is that there's really not too much that does happen. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 is a major disappointment in a number of ways but the biggest is that it's just downright boring and not scary at all. There were a couple of those fake jump scares but certainly not enough to make this thing worth sitting through. Even worse is that the entire thing seems like a complete mess with a story that never explains anything and in fact I'm not really sure if anyone knew what they were trying to do. What made the first movie so effective is the build up to something happening. None of that is here. There's never any mounting fear of what's going on and there really aren't too many scenes that even try to go for scares. I'm not going to spoil the ending but it's bad enough to where people should just stand up and either boo or request their money back. The new technology in the film doesn't add enough and right from the start you just get the feeling that the filmmakers have visited the well one too many times. Performances were decent at best but making the annoying boyfriend too annoying wasn't a good idea. I'm sure the film will make a lot of money on its opening weekend but I doubt word of mouth will be too strong so if they do plan future installments I hope they actually come up with a new and different story and quit trying to connect everything together. As this one shows, there's just very little to connect.
* 1/2 (out of 4)
The first film was a masterpiece, the second boring, the third had a good story but no scares and I think this fourth one really puts the nail in the coffin. Basically what we have takes place five years after Katie and Hunter went missing. They turn up living next door to a couple who has a teenage daughter who begins to notice strange things in the house. I won't spoil anymore for a couple reasons. One reason is that if you do decide to watch the film you won't want to know too much. The second reason is that there's really not too much that does happen. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 is a major disappointment in a number of ways but the biggest is that it's just downright boring and not scary at all. There were a couple of those fake jump scares but certainly not enough to make this thing worth sitting through. Even worse is that the entire thing seems like a complete mess with a story that never explains anything and in fact I'm not really sure if anyone knew what they were trying to do. What made the first movie so effective is the build up to something happening. None of that is here. There's never any mounting fear of what's going on and there really aren't too many scenes that even try to go for scares. I'm not going to spoil the ending but it's bad enough to where people should just stand up and either boo or request their money back. The new technology in the film doesn't add enough and right from the start you just get the feeling that the filmmakers have visited the well one too many times. Performances were decent at best but making the annoying boyfriend too annoying wasn't a good idea. I'm sure the film will make a lot of money on its opening weekend but I doubt word of mouth will be too strong so if they do plan future installments I hope they actually come up with a new and different story and quit trying to connect everything together. As this one shows, there's just very little to connect.