Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin airs exclusively on Thursday night on OCS Choc, and it is the seventh installment, in the form of a reboot, of the franchise. We saw you widen your eyes. Yes, Paranormal Activity already has 7 films in just over 10 years, and thus joins the longest horror sagas like Friday 13, Halloween, hellraiser, Saw or the universe Conjuring. The first Paranormal Activity is also one of the worthy representatives of the found footagealongside the Blair Witch Project and REC, and remains above all the most profitable film of all time, with 193 million dollars in revenue for a budget of 15,000 dollars. But otherwise, is it scary?
Almost nothing happens, but it’s already too much
The story is now known. To exorcise his fears, American director Oren Peli shoots Paranormal Activity in a short week, with the family camcorder, in his refurbished house. The galleys of Katie and Micah, witnesses of supernatural phenomena, arrive at the right time to counterbalance the fashion of the torture porn from Saw and hostel. A still image, footprints, a sheet rising… Almost nothing happens, but it’s already too much.
The public of the Screamfest Horror Film Festival is traumatized in 2007, and the film is spotted by the young producer Jason Blum, future boss of genre cinema, as well as by a certain Steven Spielberg. It is first a question of making a remake with a bigger budget and offering the original as a bonus DVD. But a test screening proves to DreamWorks that the film can be exploited as it is. Or almost. The end is returned, to the tune of $20,000.
The best is “Paranormal Activity 4”
Success is therefore there, and so are the consequences. From 2010 and at the rate of almost one film per year, the franchise explores, willy-nilly, the mythology of the demon Tobi and the past of Katie’s family. The device found footage remains the same every time, and even gets creative at the hands of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the duo behind the real mockumentary catfish. Their Paranormal Activity 4 is perhaps the most interesting of the franchise, with the use of webcams, iPhones and even Xbox’s Kinect. At least it will have been useful for something.
After an unofficial sequel, Tokyo Night, and a spin-off, The Marked Onesthe franchise bows out in 2015 in relative anonymity and with the worst of its episodes, Ghost Dimension. The camera no longer captures paranormal phenomena but opens limit interdimensional portals. It was time to end it. If Oren Peli is still producer of the films with Jason Blum, he keeps a low profile (and has only directed one other film, Area 51) and the guarantor of the franchise seems instead to be screenwriter Christopher Landon, also director of The Marked Ones but also of happy birthday. He’s back for Paranomal Activity: Next of Kindirected by William Eubank (the sympathetic underwater).
Very effective and unpretentious
Change of characters, setting, mythology and almost device. the found footage remains a franchise imponderable, but it’s used here in a less static, more dramatic way. Abandoned at birth, young Margot investigates her origins when she is contacted by a certain Samuel, who claims to know her mother and to be from her family. Finally, “family”… Margot arrives with her friends and their camera in a so-called Amish community, and above all very disturbing.
If it does not revolutionize the genre, this new episode knows how to be effective, unpretentious and with a little air of best of: sect, church, ritual, secret room, forest at night and even – small spoiler but big promise – a hole bottomless. Next of Kin may not revive the franchise Paranormal Activity, but it will easily make your evening.