Sunday, October 21, 2012

Paranormal Activity 4 (Busby's Review)

 As seen on Dajaz1.com

I’ve been a fan of the Paranormal Activity movies for the last 3 years.  I absolutely LOVED the first movie and in my opinion, when enough time passes, I feel like it will go down as a horror movie classic.  I also really enjoyed the sequels, no matter how many times people shit on them, I really did enjoy the 2nd and 3rd movies.  I mean really it’s the same shit, white folks recording themselves getting haunted by a evil supernatural force, and for some odd reason, people keep watching them.  It worked 3 times in a row rather you like it or not because it became one of the highest grossing horror movies of all time.  To the folks that complain about why they keep making these movies, ask yourself the question on why you keep paying money to go see it.  Guess you got nothing else to do on a Friday night..but I digress…

PA4 is the first sequel in the series that is NOT a prequel, and we finally find out what happened to Katie and her little nephew Hunter.  This film takes place 5 years after the events in PA2.  This time around we follow a young teenage girl named Alex (Kathryn Newton) who decides to document her daily life with her and her family.  They recently have new neighbors that moved across the street, and after the mother becomes hospitalized for a unforeseen reason, her mother decides to watch after her son named Robbie (Brady Allen) while she gets better.  After becoming friends with Alex’s little brother, strange things start happening through out the house.  With help from her best guy/boyfriend Ben (Matt Shivery), they decide to film all the activity that goes on around the house.  If you follow the last 3 movies, you already know what happens next.

Now again, let me state that I DO LOVE this franchise, and I really did enjoy the sequels.  Hell, I’ll go on and say that it’s my guilty pleasure of movies that I can’t help but watch.  However, after I saw the 3rd movie I quickly realized that if they don’t end this series soon, then I’m afraid the movies will fall into Saw  territory and they will just get worn out. Sadly for this movie, that is EXACTLY what happened..and then some.

Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the same directors that did PA3, are brought back for this film to being the same magic that brought in the last one.  Not gonna lie, they did being new ways to watch the cameras this time while using the Iphones, MacBooks, and the Xbox Kinect motion lights.  However, other then that, the movie just falls flat.  Literally NOTHING happens in this movie, until the last 15 minutes.  I mean I’m not gonna lie, the tension is still there, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen in the first 3 movies.  You are pretty much used to it by now, and it really does start to get stall after a while.

 

In case your wondering, YES, Katie IS back in all her possessed glory for this sequel.  Personally, I’ve had the biggest crush on her since the first movie, mostly because of those knockers she has.  However, she is only in 5 scenes, and majority of her scenes were just to show all the demonic powers that she has now since Toby the demon has her possessed.  I really didn’t like the way they used her character in this movie, and I was really kind of let down by that.  After 2 prequels and a bunch of flashbacks, they could have done her character A LOT better.

Matter a fact, besides Alex and Ben, there really wasn’t NO character development.  In the first 3 movies, we got a chance to know the entire cast of characters, we even got a chance to get to know the demon a little bit and it’s motives to do what it’s doing.  In this one, we could really give a flying fuck about any of the characters besides the 2 main characters and Robbie.  Plus the logic is just mind blowing, why the FUCK would you agree to watch over someones kid you just BARELY know?  Also there was a scene in this movie where Alex shows her dad footage of a shadowy figure fly across the camera, and the only thing he says is, “That’s awesome!”..smmfh…  I pretty much gave up on the reasons why she was filming all the shit in the first place, because honestly there really was NO reason for her to film.  In the first 3 movies, the characters had legitimate reasons on WHY they were filming, in this one there was no reason at all.  However, when it comes to these Paranormal Activity movies, just throw the logic out the window.


Like I stated earlier, the last 15 minutes is when shit really gets going and the last 5 minutes is when shit REALLY hits the fan.  BUT, that ending really just left more questions to be answered for the next one.  In my opinion, this ending really seemed rushed, you really didn’t get the chance to process all the shit that was happening and before you finally do, the movie abruptly ends.  When the lights came up in the theater, me and my friend just sat there and said, “What the fuck just happened?” The ending left a bad taste in my mouth because the writers and directors did the one thing that shows the biggest sign that they need to wrap things up.  Without spoiling anything, lets just say they jumped the shark.  The tagline for this movie is, “All the activity has lead to this”, that my friends is misleading because all the activity has lead to ANOTHER sequel.

All in all I was really disappointed in this film, and my worst fears for the franchise really did come true.  Hopefully with the next movie that is due out next year (It’s inevitable at this point), hopefully the studio figures out a grand finale for the series that will leave the fans happy.  Recently they started a viral campaign that continues the story and hopefully shows the direction the series is going.  Other then that, I will go on and say that PA4 is the weakest one out of the entire series, and they really do need to wrap it up.

Busby's Review: 2/5

~~Mr. Busby~~

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