Boy, I gotta praise these Paranormal Activity films. They sure know how to take scenes and sounds that might be considered scary and turn them into predictable, boring, funny and least of all, not terrifying strung together YouTube clips.
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, which is either Part 5, a spin-off, chapter, homage or whatever, is literally just the same as the rest of the franchise with the slight exception of location. No longer are we mercifully subjected to seeing the same living room, kitchen, dining room, bedrooms, hallways, staircases or chandeliers 50x with nothing going on. Instead, we're in the slums and a crummy apartment. I actually give the movie credit for that "change."
The rest is the same old story: Someone who never knows how or when to put a video camera down watches as someone else gets very slowly possessed, does an extremely half-assed job of investigation and finally gets taken over.
Jesse and his homoerotic (or I wished) best bud film every uneventful second of their equally boring life following High School graduation when the suspected witch downstairs is murdered. Oh, no, here comes yet another possession.
There's a point to where screenplay writers want to give the audience what they desire when they pen a script, but to do it repeatedly for 4 additional films and leave zero shocks, surprises, intrigue or freshness, they should be blacklisted right out of Hollywood.
I will say this for a positive: despite absolutely nothing going on for the first half of the movie, at least it wasn't as gut wrenching and unintentionally hilarious as the last half. I couldn't help but laugh in the theatre when characters are running for their lives from things not really scary or original and never instinctively dropped the camera. I literally was pointing at the screen in the right spots for the "big shocks" to come.
If you've seen the first four movies – and for that, I applaud you made it this far; I hope you got a huge prize for that awful bet your friend made you – you've seen this movie. Skip it.
* * * Final thoughts: Had Jesse and Hector, the two male leads in this mundane episode, not been so incredibly cute, I'd have absolutely nothing to look at in this movie. Sadly, one of them spent the bulk of his screen time behind the camera, but at least I could wake up once he got in front of the camera.
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, which is either Part 5, a spin-off, chapter, homage or whatever, is literally just the same as the rest of the franchise with the slight exception of location. No longer are we mercifully subjected to seeing the same living room, kitchen, dining room, bedrooms, hallways, staircases or chandeliers 50x with nothing going on. Instead, we're in the slums and a crummy apartment. I actually give the movie credit for that "change."
The rest is the same old story: Someone who never knows how or when to put a video camera down watches as someone else gets very slowly possessed, does an extremely half-assed job of investigation and finally gets taken over.
Jesse and his homoerotic (or I wished) best bud film every uneventful second of their equally boring life following High School graduation when the suspected witch downstairs is murdered. Oh, no, here comes yet another possession.
There's a point to where screenplay writers want to give the audience what they desire when they pen a script, but to do it repeatedly for 4 additional films and leave zero shocks, surprises, intrigue or freshness, they should be blacklisted right out of Hollywood.
I will say this for a positive: despite absolutely nothing going on for the first half of the movie, at least it wasn't as gut wrenching and unintentionally hilarious as the last half. I couldn't help but laugh in the theatre when characters are running for their lives from things not really scary or original and never instinctively dropped the camera. I literally was pointing at the screen in the right spots for the "big shocks" to come.
If you've seen the first four movies – and for that, I applaud you made it this far; I hope you got a huge prize for that awful bet your friend made you – you've seen this movie. Skip it.
* * * Final thoughts: Had Jesse and Hector, the two male leads in this mundane episode, not been so incredibly cute, I'd have absolutely nothing to look at in this movie. Sadly, one of them spent the bulk of his screen time behind the camera, but at least I could wake up once he got in front of the camera.