It is kind of amazing how horror movie franchises can show the same thing over and over and still be able to draw a crowd. “Paranormal Activity: Ghost Dimension” is anything but original. By the sixth installment of the franchise, you start to feel like if you have seen one of the movies, you have seen them all. Still, it garnered $8.2 million in box office sales in week one alone.
Going down the checklist, the new “Paranormal” meets all the requirements needed to fit into the spirit-haunting-your-house genre. It includes young and attractive parents, a creepy little girl, a mysterious camera with home videos included, a slacker uncle for comedic relief, a little bit of cleavage and of course an evil spirit that just will not go away.
Okay, I have seen every “Paranormal Activity” movie since the release of the first in 2009 — I will admit that. But I cannot decide if they are getting worse or I am just getting older and desensitized to nonsense in “Paranormal.” After a few hours of internal conflict, I have concluded this last movie was by far the worst one of them all for a number of reasons.
First, the format of the movie is all too predictable for those who are well versed in “Paranormal” movies, such as myself. Happy family, strange things start happening, night one caught on camera, night two caught on camera and then the climactic ending where everyone dies except the kid.
Second, you were able to see the spirit Toby with a magical camera the dad of the family found ever so conveniently at the beginning of the movie. With the camera, he had the ability to see floating particles through the lens that everyone in the world knew was bad news, except the dad. It took away from the suspense of not knowing what the spirit was up to, of only knowing the spirit was there because he was knocking things over and making people fly across the room. Plus, the special effects made the ghost look like a mix of a dementor and Venom, the evil version of Spiderman. It was just too cheesy for me.
Third, the movie failed to define the next evolution in horror movies. The first “Paranormal Activity” created a new genre in horror movies by adding the handheld camcorder element to it. Yet, this “Paranormal” chose to stick with the same plot line where a creepy little kid is the prized possession of an evil demon and does not like religious objects such as bibles.
Fourth, the sentence, “Maybe it was just the wind” was uttered. I am not even going to dignify this with an explanation.
Lastly, the creepy little girl that has been mentioned many times before was able to travel between dimensions using a portal above her bed that would disappear and reappear at her convenience. It was just too much for me and proved that the “Paranormal” franchise has grown desperate. The franchise started out with a simple, yet eerie and innovative plot line of a young couple that encounters strange things in their home and transformed it into one that involves different dimensions, a coven of witches and a demon now turned into an actual human by some prolonged and complicated ritual.
To close, I will give the “Paranormal” franchise some props. It has still remained to be a fun movie to watch in a dark room with friends on a rainy day. It is also amazing how the franchise has continued to produce well-received movies that have in turn produced so many fan theories. The franchise has hit a speed bump, but that doesn’t mean it can’t prosper with a certain amount of innovation.
Jack Riewe is an English senior and a Life & Arts writer for The Battalion.
