Paranormal Activity 4 sucked – I don’t think I’m out of line nor am I alone in that opinion. It was incredibly disappointing because I loved the first one so much, tolerated the second and really loved the third one. The fact that the directors of Paranormal Activity 3 returned for the fourth was really exciting to me – and then I tried watching it. Truth be told, I have yet to finish the fourth film because I was so bored and let down by it.
All of that is beside the point since the new trailer for the Paranormal Activity “spinoff,” Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, has surfaced online. Call it what you want, but this looks like a glorified sequel to me. The film does not look as though it follows any side character from any of the previous films or even someone marginally related to the people from the previous films. Instead, it takes the mythology of its predecessors and throws in some cameos from the poor souls in the original movies to create an entirely new timeline- we’ll call in a ‘spinquel.’
The trailer is your run of the mill Paranormal Activity type trailer – loud noises, demon voices, people flying through the air with the help of an unseen force – business as usual for Toby and his friends. This time around, the demon is haunting a young man and his friends do some research only to find the tragic stories of Katie and her sister and realize that the same thing is happening here.
The biggest difference from the previous films is that rather than the characters trying to MacGyver through the situation by adhering a camera to whatever real world object they can find to capture spooky activity in their home, the characters are capturing some the supernatural activity all around town. There’s an abundance of gang members getting launched into the air, car windows exploding and people getting attacked in cars. I have to say at the very least I’m a little more interested than I was after I shut Paranormal Activity 4 off prematurely, but I’m still not entirely optimistic.
Without spoiling anything, the way this fits into the series is a bit confusing to me at the same time based on a single shot in the trailer. I might need to watch some of the movies over again, but something didn’t seem like it made sense to me if this is supposed to take place after what happened with Katie and her sister as adults. I guess we will find out for sure when it hits theaters January 3rd. Check out the trailer here.