Nato – No Paranormal Activity Sequels!
Paranormal Activity has been going downhill since, well, Paranormal Activity. Year after year the franchise has been spiralling out of control, and now that we’ve completely lost the mysterious aspect of the invisible demon, I couldn’t be less interested. Let’s go through the progression, shall we?
Paranormal Activity scared the ever-loving shit out of me. I won’t even hide it. Some people didn’t react in the least, and scoffed at the film, but personally, my sleep schedule was sabotaged for about a week. That’s just me though – I have a definite fear of the unknown, and Paranormal Activity capitalized on that.
Paranormal Activity 2 wasn’t a bad follow up, introducing security cameras instead of a handy cam, but already questions of originality came into play. The character world opened up, we were introduced to Katie’s sister, and the legend of Hunter was born. Again, not the worst follow up, as there were some pretty good jump scares yet again, but it wasn’t exactly the same.
Then came Paranormal Activity 3, which some believe to be the best in the series, but I didn’t see that personally. I don’t know, maybe I saw the wrong movie, but the whole witch/Toby thing didn’t fly. For me, once this malevolent force was given a persona of sorts, the mystery and intrigue vanished. You knew who was going to die, you knew who was going to live. Also, I wasn’t jumping about as usual, and noticed a serious lack of scares.
Nothing can compare to Paranormal Activity 4 though, the miserable stinker I thankfully didn’t have to review. Yup, I caught this thing on Netflix for free, and I couldn’t have been happier. While the Xbox Kinect aspect was cool in a nerdy way, there wasn’t a single scare to be found, and turning Katie into full demon form made me laugh. What a terrible, horrible waste of time. Bland, repetitive, and missing the creative spark originally discovered by Oren Peli – exactly what you’d assume from the fourth film in a franchise.
Of course, this just means we get not one, but TWO Paranormal Activity films in 2014 – fuck.
On that note, enjoy the holidays everyone, and have a happy Thanksgiving!
It’s the time of year to give thanks, so horror fans, what are you thankful for this year?
*A special thanks to Remy for stepping in to guest write! Feel free to follow either of us on Twitter for even more insanity and updates:
Matt Donato Follow @DoNatoBomb
Remy Carreiro Follow @RemyCarreiro
Like what you read? Check out last week’s article where we reflect on our 2013 predictions, and find out how wrong/right we were!
