Turns out, they have moved across the street from fifteen year old Alex (Kathryn Newton), her tech-savvy boyfriend Ben, who doesn't live there but might as well (Matt Shively, of True Jackson, VP fame), her younger brother Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp), and her parents (Stephen Dunham and Alexondra Lee). Only in this part, he's called "Robbie," not "Hunter" and is about six years old. After two films we finally reconnect with Katie from the original film, this time, living on an upper-middle class suburban block with Hunter from the second film. The characters are a tad more tolerable, and some sequences, including the end, have a bit more life in them, but when the moments examine the paranormal inactivity of it all, it becomes totally vanilla. This installment is a small improvement over the uninspired third part, yet it has little to offer. Now I'm faced with the fourth film in the genre, directed by the extremely talented directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, who made one of 2010's finest documentaries, Catfish. When I walked out of the original film on that faithful October morning, I hoped that the wonderful picture I had just saw would be left alone, and not have the albatrosses known as sequels leaching off of it. It has become an unintentional October ritual that I decorate the house for Halloween, watch a few horror films, and, since 2009, see the latest installment of the Paranormal Activity franchise. My advice: if you're looking for a scary film that will be with you for days.go see "Sinister." If you see this one, prepare to be disappointed.as it wouldn't be incorrect to say that the scariest scenes.are in the trailer.some of which somehow don't even make it into the film itself. To be honest, I just think they've run out of ideas on this franchise, which is I suspect why the film, even with about five minutes of clips from the first two films, just barely makes it over the 80 minute mark. The most bizarre moment of the entire film.is when Alex and her Father are under attack by the witches coven and the paranormal force.and presumably as she's running for her life, Alex is carrying around her laptop. Seriously, aside from some menacing moments when Katie appears behind someone, and you're waiting to see what she does, there is literally no scares besides jump scares. As is the need to rely on jump scares and CGI. Apparently no one closes there laptop after they're done using it, but I digress.the formula is obviously warn out. I mean, there are no home video cameras in the 's all captured apparently on laptop web cam.which requires Alex to basically cart along her laptop wherever she goes, while the other laptops are set to remote record. Now it has to be said that I think the found footage element in this film has been stretched to the max. Paranormal activities begin to plague the family, in particular Alex, from the moment that Robbie enters the home.but her efforts to alert her family of what's going on falls on deaf ears until, by the end, they meet the typical franchise fate. During this time Robbie bonds with the family's young son Wyatt.and introduces him to his unseen companion.who we assume is "Toby," though I don't recall this ever being made clear. One night Katie is taken away in an ambulance, and so the family across the street takes in Robbie until Katie is well enough to come home. Robbie has a propensity for wandering onto the property of the neighbours across the street, giving Alex, the daughter of the family, and her best friend Ben the creeps.something that they mention seemingly every 30 seconds in the first half of the film. The base story is that Katie, the possessed woman from the first two films, and the sibling who was haunted by Toby in the third film, has moved next door to a new family with her adopted son "Robbie" in tow. Now we have "Paranormal Activity 4," and I must admit, I found this one utterly ridiculous in so many ways. The third one, I must admit, I found very effective at times, and it was the best of the franchise in my view. Okay, so I'll admit that I found the first "Paranormal Activity" to be overrated, and the second to be largely an extension of the first.
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