Director: Gregory Plotkin
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Showing posts with label Paranormal Activity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paranormal Activity. Show all posts
Wednesday, 21 October 2015
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension review
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (15/R, 88 mins)
Director: Gregory Plotkin
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
The advertising for the latest found footage spook-snooze in the Paranormal Activity series boasts that for the first time you will see the activity. Basically if anything at all were to happen on screen it would be an exponential increase in excitement from the thoroughly dull and lifeless affairs that the franchise has devolved into. The first was a nice surprise and for a while they were being knocked out at one a year, at the cost of about £6.50, and therefore to healthy box office returns even as audience interest started to wane. They’re less frequent now, but this one follows the same template of a family in a house being bothered by poltergeisty antics. When they find a bunch of old VHS tapes featuring two young girls who seem able to see what they're doing, they set up cameras at night to record the mysterious goings on in their daughter’s bedroom. We then get to watch that footage in all its glory, and in fairness we do get to see the activity, consisting mostly of fuzzy shapes and sudden loud noises. It’s all relentlessly, criminally boring and riddled with more plot holes than there’s room for here - do they never actually look at what they’ve filmed afterwards? And worst of all because it’s supposedly being filmed on an old 80s camera, we’re forced to watch it through a headache-inducing blur. Almost as bad is an exhausting gimmick where the 3D only kicks in when the ghost does its thing, but at least constantly putting on and taking off the glasses is a nice distraction from watching the movie.
Director: Gregory Plotkin
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Paranormal Activity 4 review
Paranormal Activity 4 (15/R, 87 mins)
Directors: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Films like Paranormal Activity 4 are a true gift to moviegoers. Rarely do you get the opportunity to spend 90 minutes in a cinema entirely alone with your thoughts, with absolutely nothing on screen to distract you. It’s a great chance to make a start on that novel perhaps, or plan for your retirement. It’s only been three years since the first Paranormal Activity arrived as a breath of fresh air for horror fans, and became a surprise smash. With their tiny production costs and insatiable fanbase they can be churned out indefinitely, but three films down the line it’s clear the makers are all out of ideas. With the need to introduce ever more convoluted backstory into the timeline, this one kicks off in 2006 with the kidnap of a baby seen in one of the earlier movies. We then jump to 2011 and a new family, and predominantly the teenage daughter, as they start to experience strange goings on after they take in the weird young boy from across the street while his mother is in hospital. The now thoroughly redundant found footage conceit necessitates someone filming all aspects of the family’s daily life, and there’s simply no justification for some of the things shown here being filmed. It also begs the question, if this is all supposed to be home footage, why is it whenever something happens on screen it’s accompanied by a loud bang on the soundtrack? It’s all incredibly stupid and desperately tedious, with literally nothing happening for most of the running time, interspersed with nonsensical poltergeist interaction. Take along your tax forms to keep you entertained.
Directors: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Films like Paranormal Activity 4 are a true gift to moviegoers. Rarely do you get the opportunity to spend 90 minutes in a cinema entirely alone with your thoughts, with absolutely nothing on screen to distract you. It’s a great chance to make a start on that novel perhaps, or plan for your retirement. It’s only been three years since the first Paranormal Activity arrived as a breath of fresh air for horror fans, and became a surprise smash. With their tiny production costs and insatiable fanbase they can be churned out indefinitely, but three films down the line it’s clear the makers are all out of ideas. With the need to introduce ever more convoluted backstory into the timeline, this one kicks off in 2006 with the kidnap of a baby seen in one of the earlier movies. We then jump to 2011 and a new family, and predominantly the teenage daughter, as they start to experience strange goings on after they take in the weird young boy from across the street while his mother is in hospital. The now thoroughly redundant found footage conceit necessitates someone filming all aspects of the family’s daily life, and there’s simply no justification for some of the things shown here being filmed. It also begs the question, if this is all supposed to be home footage, why is it whenever something happens on screen it’s accompanied by a loud bang on the soundtrack? It’s all incredibly stupid and desperately tedious, with literally nothing happening for most of the running time, interspersed with nonsensical poltergeist interaction. Take along your tax forms to keep you entertained.
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Paranormal Activity 2 review
Paranormal Activity 2 (15, 91 mins)
Director: Tod Williams
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Released just under a year ago to decent acclaim and boffo box office (considering its miniscule budget), Paranormal Activity was a horror success story of near Blair Witch proportions. Its simple device of presenting camcorder footage of a couple, Katie and Micah, being terrorised by unseen forces was stunningly persuasive and genuinely frightening.
This quick-out-the-blocks sequel is actually a prequel, set a few weeks before the events of the first film, with the focus now on the family of Katie’s sister, Kristi. As before, everything we see is shot on their own camera, beginning with Kristi and her husband Dan returning home with their new baby, Hunter.
We get snippets of footage of Hunter going from baby to toddler, taking us up to a break-in at their home that leads to Dan and Kristi installing security cameras all around the house, which allows for the action to be covered from various vantage points at all times, rather than just when the video camera is being used.
This means we get to see the increasingly strange goings on around the house, with inanimate objects moving by themselves, and Hunter and the family dog fixated by something in the corner of the bedroom that only they can see.
In many respects it’s the same movie as the first, just done less effectively. The manifestations of malevolent force are far more physical in nature, with cupboards flying open and people being thrown about. But the overriding condition is LOUD, and this is what really cheapens PA2.
Where the original used suggestion and shadow to instil slow creeping dread by making you think you could see monsters in every corner, this simply clatters you around the head with thunderous noises every 10 minutes or so.
While this might instinctively provoke a jump the first time it happens, it soon becomes terrifically boring. In its defence, the overlap with the first film is clever when it comes, although the setup for a third entry is irritating. But, as feared, the rash of imitators in the wake of Paranormal Activity just don’t seem to know what made the original and best tick.
Director: Tod Williams
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Released just under a year ago to decent acclaim and boffo box office (considering its miniscule budget), Paranormal Activity was a horror success story of near Blair Witch proportions. Its simple device of presenting camcorder footage of a couple, Katie and Micah, being terrorised by unseen forces was stunningly persuasive and genuinely frightening.
This quick-out-the-blocks sequel is actually a prequel, set a few weeks before the events of the first film, with the focus now on the family of Katie’s sister, Kristi. As before, everything we see is shot on their own camera, beginning with Kristi and her husband Dan returning home with their new baby, Hunter.
We get snippets of footage of Hunter going from baby to toddler, taking us up to a break-in at their home that leads to Dan and Kristi installing security cameras all around the house, which allows for the action to be covered from various vantage points at all times, rather than just when the video camera is being used.
This means we get to see the increasingly strange goings on around the house, with inanimate objects moving by themselves, and Hunter and the family dog fixated by something in the corner of the bedroom that only they can see.
In many respects it’s the same movie as the first, just done less effectively. The manifestations of malevolent force are far more physical in nature, with cupboards flying open and people being thrown about. But the overriding condition is LOUD, and this is what really cheapens PA2.
Where the original used suggestion and shadow to instil slow creeping dread by making you think you could see monsters in every corner, this simply clatters you around the head with thunderous noises every 10 minutes or so.
While this might instinctively provoke a jump the first time it happens, it soon becomes terrifically boring. In its defence, the overlap with the first film is clever when it comes, although the setup for a third entry is irritating. But, as feared, the rash of imitators in the wake of Paranormal Activity just don’t seem to know what made the original and best tick.
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