‘Paranormal Activity 4’ Review: The Horror Franchise Finally Loses Its Way
By Angie Han/Oct. 19, 2012 1:00 pm EST
In contrast, I don’t think I’ve ever been as relaxed during a horror movie as I was during Paranormal Activity 4. The scares are theoretically bigger and badder this time around, but sloppy storytelling from directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman undermines any impact they might’ve had. After three great installments, the little low-budget horror series that could has finally lost its way.
To be sure, Paranormal Activity 4 isn’t actually painful to sit through. Though it feels longer than its 88 minutes, it never drags long enough to inspire true boredom. Scenes involving the green, glowing motion sensors of an Xbox Kinect are impressively eerie the first time around, though the effect loses its impact by the end. And there are some genuinely funny moments sprinkled throughout, thanks mostly to the comfortable, flirtatious chemistry between Netwon and Shively.
But the real issue is Paranormal Activity 4’s storytelling, which is downright insulting in its laziness. Robbie’s otherworldly creepiness is telegraphed from the moment he appears, and from there events proceed exactly as you think they would with nary a twist to be found. Yet, all the while, none of the characters seem properly terrified. The urgent fear that made the earlier films so enjoyably unbearable has been replaced by a vague concern. Even Alex, the only person in the household who realizes that something is seriously off, can’t be bothered to fix her cameras when they stop working.
And speaking of those cameras: A frequent complaint of the found-footage subgenre is that too many of them rely on characters continuing to shoot long after any right-thinking person would’ve put the goddamn camera down. Paranormal Activity 4 makes an attempt to explain part of the footage: Some of it comes from recording software that Alex and Ben install on all the computers after the weirdness starts, and other scenes are pulled from saved video chats between the teenagers. But Alex also carries around a camera with her at all times for no apparent reason, whether she’s talking to her mom on the kitchen table, walking into the garage, or climbing a ladder.
To make matters worse, she continues this obsessive documentation while entering into situations that, again, any half-conscious human would go to great lengths to avoid. One key scene sees her trying to escape a dangerous situation that she willingly walked into, and never once thinking to put down her iPhone — or indeed, even use her iPhone-wielding arm — during the ordeal. Most horror films, and indeed most films, require some suspension of disbelief, but Paranormal Activity 4 puts the entire burden on the audience.
Not helping matters is the shoddy character work. Alex and Ben at least have their relationship with one another to help flesh each of them out, but the rest of Alex’s family merely wanders in and out as dictated by the plot. When Alex’s mom gives her sleeping pills, it’s not because she seems like the type to slip her daughter prescription meds, or because Alex seems to particularly need them, but because Joost and Schulman really needed to set up a cool shot of the ghost messing with her while she’s conked out.
The directors’ failure is especially surprising, and disappointing, given that they also helmed the spine-tingling Paranormal Activity 3. Paranormal Activity 4 feels less like a fresh installment of a beloved series and more like a beloved ripoff of same. The lo-fi shaky-cam aesthetic, middle-class suburban setting, and doors that shut themselves in the middle of the night remain the same. The devotion to relative realism, believable characters, and simmering tension have been tossed out the window. The ending of Paranormal Acitivity 4 is indeed pretty frightening, but not in the way the filmmakers might’ve hoped. It scares me because it suggests that 4 has set us on an entirely new path that I don’t care to follow.
/Film rating: 2 out of 10
