![]() If the result is that The Marked Ones is, in a walk, the laziest and most generic of the Paranormal Activities, it also doesn't reach the frustrating depths of the last two. Which is maybe what is meant in calling this a "spin-off", though I think structural niceties are probably not what Landon or series guardians and producers Oren Peli and Jason Blum had in mind. This is the first Paranormal Activity to largely eschew the static camera looking at a room style in favor of handheld consumer-grade cameras being shakily carried around by the main characters, the dominant mode of pretty much every found-footage movie outside of this franchise. This newfound love for jump scares comes hand-in-hand with the other big aesthetic leap in this movie, which is a charmingly optimistic way to phrase it. Which, I can never emphasise this enough, is more than PA4 had going for it, so congratulations to writer-director Christopher Landon (who's had his hands in every Paranormal Activity since the second one): he knows how to make a mechanically functioning movie, which is apparently something we can't take for granted now. For a franchise whose creepiness bona fides have relied primarily on slow builds and letting the viewer soak in the frame, this film is awfully dependent on stock-issue jump scares. What I do know is that in its clumsy, obvious way, The Marked Ones is openly trying to be a scary movie, and all things being equal, I do tend to prefer horror films that make an attempt to be scary over horror movies that all excited about collating the narrative details of the films preceding them.Ĭertainly, the kind of scares to be had here are of an entirely reductive sort, but that will happen with fifth films: the camera moves here, it's empty, it moves to a close-up of the mildly confused protagonist, it moves back only this time somebody is standing in shot as wasn't there before! Accompanied by a noisy musical sting or clanging sound effect, things that typically cannot be incorporated into the nominally real and entirely diegetic onscreen world of found-footage horror movies, though bless me if The Marked Ones doesn't think long and hard about making that leap. I don't know if it's quite the case that The Marked Ones is back up to the level of quality represented by PA3, and I don't know if it would be the case if that was really a good thing anyway. In truth, The Marked Ones is something of a return to grace for the series, which had been steadily worsening all though way through to Paranormal Activity 3 in 2011, but only ran aground on Shit Island with the fourth entry in 2012. Incomprehensibly-written demons don't care what skin color you have. Latinos are a reliable audience for this franchise? Then throw some Latinos at it. ![]() Spinoff my balls: Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones belongs firmly in the mainline continuity of a franchise that now reaches its fifth entry in the most pandering and condescending way I can imagine. ![]()
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