Paranormal Activity 4

2012

If you’ve never seen the Paranormal Activity movies then you probably shouldn’t start with this one. Just like a teenager, you’d be confused and frustrated. Who is that woman? Why are these children so creepy? How does her hair stay so perfect? Why are people always attracting weird shit in the suburbs?

If you absolutely refuse to see the Paranormal Activity movies, but still like reading my reviews, then I will give you a recap of what they consist of. Firstly, it’s part of a new genre called “found footage.” Presumably we are watching what future murder investigators are watching, after an extensive cut of weeks and weeks of continuous footage from webcams to security cameras to video cameras to camera phones. All of this is made possible because the people in the Paranormal movies are fairly rich and therefore have access to this technology, as well as servers to save everything. That’s where the first suspension of belief exists. It’s not really a documentary, even a fake one, because the filmmakers never intended to make it as such. It was just a bunch white people who started recording everything because why not?

All the Paranormal Activity movies are connected by one story line. A woman and her sister come from a long line of witches, although they may not realize (or accept it). Generations ago, the family made a deal with a demon to give the family wealth and riches. The only payment was the first male heir. Typical demons. Greedy for children. Somehow (or through the power of abortions and infanticide) there is no male heir until present day. Demon is ready to collect, and if he has to possess or kill a few folks and pets along the way, he’s going to do it. Hell, he really is just doing his job. Satan is a task-master.

The first date of the movie is November 1, 2011. How easy: “The Day of the Dead.” I mean if you’re going to start a horror movie on any day of the year, definitely make it this one. Pagans, witches, Catholics, Latino Catholics, everyone loves this date. Halloween is the date that opens the door to the dead. November 1 is when you close the door and see who got out. And the day to find your cat, who you know someone let out accidentally.

This film focuses on the young male heir, who has unknowingly been adopted by what seems like a typical American family: alcoholic parents who don’t love each other with an unsupervised yet sheltered daughter. We never know how little Hunter/Wyatt got to the family, but I’m going to throw it out there: adoptive parents made a deal with a back alley demon and lawyer.

The little boy starts hanging out with Robbie, a super creepy kid from across the street. The daughter, Alex, and her boyfriend, Ben, start to notice the oddities of this neighbor boy, especially the fact that he wears socks with sandals. I mean, that IS the look of psychiatric patients, and being on a 7 year old makes it even worse. So Alex and the boyfriend do the things any typical teen couple would do: set the laptops in the house to full-time surveillance mode.

This was done in the other movies, but a fun little technology was added in this movie: X-Box Kinect. If you don’t believe in technology or haven’t seen TV recently, the Kinect is a motion sense input device that sends out laser signals throughout the room and people standing in the range can interact with the games on the console. However, the teens figure out (probably through Instagram or Wikipedia or something) that when you turn a camera to “night-mode” (favorite of amateur porn stars and ghost hunters), you can see the Kinect laser dots, which illuminate people (and other beings). We all know where this going.

Alex and Ben review the recordings and see someone or something breaking the Kinect dots, as well as other changes in light and motion. During this time, Sandals Kid comes to stay with them because his mother is taken to the hospital. Of course, Alex tries to warn her parents but they are too angry at each other (or drunk) to listen to her. So Alex continues to record her entire family without their knowledge, capturing all the activity, which steadily increases as the movie goes on.

Adopted Kid and Sandals Kid are now best friends, but in a way that you can tell they could convince each other to do anything. We start to learn that Robbie’s mom is the woman from the first Paranormal Activity movie (like no one saw that coming) and she has moved to this very nice suburb so she can conjure the devil in a nice neighborhood with plenty of driveway space for all her witch friends.

The coven wants Adopted Kid back, which doesn’t make any sense. Why did they give him up in the first place? You could have killed him plenty of times prior. You’re in Nevada, the national state of getting rid of bodies. Guess I shouldn’t hate the demon player, hate the demon game. They steal him back, killing everyone else along the way. Except the cat. Presumably because the cat will get a spin-off in Paranormal Activity 9 Lives.