PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4

In 2006, after the massacre of the Rey family by Katie, the woman kidnaps her nephew Hunter and disappears without a trace. 2011. Fifteen-year-old Alex is disturbed by the presence of little Robbie, a child who has come to live in the house across the street with his mother. When one night the woman has a medical emergency and is taken away by ambulance, Robbie is entrusted for a few days to Alex's family. The child is introverted and struggles to bond with the family members, although little by little he begins to befriend Wyatt, Alex's little brother and Robbie's peer. But ever since the child entered his home, Alex begins to hear and see strange things. Thus, on the advice of her boyfriend Ben, she decides to record 24 hours a day everything that happens in the house with the webcams of the computers. With nearly 300 million dollars grossed in the United States alone with the first three films, the "Paranormal Activity" series wins the title of the most profitable saga in the new American horror landscape, especially considering the ridiculously low production costs of each chapter. For the top executives of Paramount Pictures and producers Oren Peli and Jason Blum, it has therefore become a fixed annual appointment: films that cost little and bring a lot of money into their pockets. But beyond the economic aspect—an essential aspect of this cinematic phenomenon—the "Paranormal Activity" saga also carries importance from a technical and sociological perspective, showing how the poverty of means is not an obstacle to success with the general public and how mockumentary is truly the most popular language in the last cinematic genre decade as it is effective in spectator identification. Aware of this and the fact that the domestic hearth is the most suitable place to set horror stories and that the invisible and intangible are firmly more effective in instilling fear than monsters and splatter, we arrive at the fourth chapter of the "Paranormal Activity" saga, which brings us back to the present. After, in fact, the increasingly backward journeys in time of the second and third chapters, "Paranormal Activity 4" picks up on the ending of "Paranormal Activity 2" to then make a leap forward of five years until 2011. Another story and other characters—at least that's what it seems!—that for the first time in this saga bring us to face the teen movie. Realizing (a bit late) what the median age is of the paying audience of the various "Paranormal Activity" films, screenwriter Christopher Landon decides to make the protagonists of the story two teenagers, Alex, played by the lovely Kathryn Newton, and her boyfriend Ben, portrayed by Matt Shively. For the first hour of the film, we witness the daily life of these two lovebirds, with the virginal blonde and the male's attempts to steal—at least—a kiss on the cheek from her (in vain). All this experienced mostly through video chat and Skype while all around strange things happen like moving shadows, doors that close on their own, and the nighttime incursions of the strange little boy. The most interesting aspect of "Paranormal Activity 4" lies in the intention to change the approach to the recording medium, which this time, aided by the action and experience of very young protagonists, becomes increasingly technological. Almost entirely abandoned the traditional recording means such as camcorders (even with VHS from the third chapter!) and surveillance circuits, here the image is captured by webcams, iPhones, and even the Kinect of the Xbox in what is the most original and suggestive perspective of the entire film. "Paranormal Activity 4" however ends here, because for the rest it is only a patchwork of things seen in the three previous films, with the same moments of tension, the usual ways of acting of the demon, and the same plot twists. The film, signed by the duo Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman as in the previous film, is lively and has a fairly broad scope to almost make us forget that we are facing a mockumentary, yet the poverty of ideas is noticeable from the first minutes with the storyline brought to a higher level but at the same time wrapped up on itself. This fourth chapter is almost a non-event because, although it opens new horizons and characters in the story, it actually adds nothing to what was already known, leaving the viewer with a handful of nothing until an evident and announced continuation with a fifth film. The truly successful scenes can be counted on the fingers of a one-handed man, the ending feels very familiar, and although the film does not bore and is not on the lowest step of the saga (which for now belongs to "Paranormal Activity 2"), it is perceptible how the potential of this franchise has been amply exhausted and this fourth chapter is an obvious dragging towards an end that is attempted to be postponed year after year until the box office decides to say enough is enough. Do not get up from your seats at the beginning of the end credits because at their end there is a surprise that announces the "Spanish" spin-off that will be released in American theaters in the spring of 2013, directed by screenwriter Christopher Landon.