You would wait for something bad to happen. And you will be jumped with many moments, after that you will feel foolish, after realizing, that all the while you were alert for something scary to happen, and finally you got scare-jumped because of something foolish and common.
Above three lines are the summery of this new Sequel of Paranormal Activity franchise. The Genre is shifting. No, It is still "Found Footage" but stand still cameras have made way for Laptop and Kinect and Mobile Videos and Laptop Chat windows.
I never intended to watch this movie in theater in first place. I went for Skyfall, which apparently didn't have any seats left. So bought it's next day's ticket. Yeah, next post will be about Skyfall. Then what to do? I still had time and wanted to watch something, so asked the lady at the counter which English movie is running next? The answer comes Paranormal Activity 4. Immediately I said yes and she was shocked. My friend also agreed and we booked next 2 hours with Paranormal Activity 4.
My friend didn't have any background of previous 3 movies, so I was explaining him before the movie, about the characters and story so far. While explaining that, I realized, the Genre has become a template and how this movie would be shown. How the sequence of happenings are going to be. I realized, that first 30 minutes would only be spoon feeding about characters, and the story build up. I also realized, that since it is laptop video and Kinect is also going to play a big role, the characters will be more paranoid to the thoughts of devil's existence and one guy/girl would keep telling about something weird happening to others, and those others would certainly ridicule him/her and eventually all would succumb to death by the ghost. The question was how it has to be narrated. The narration should be new. Every-time it has to be new!
So, as I imagined, first half an hour, was exactly like that. But, now we had Robbie, the Kid, which I supposed would be Hunter, makes you jump in his very first appearance, and that too within first 15 minutes. It was kind of new. It made every one scare-jump and then everyone laughed at their stupidity.
Similar thing happens for 5-6 times in the movie, and it is really good, it adds to the the storyline, and keeps audience busy with these jumps. But I guess still something was missing. Since this is 4th installment of franchise and the makers have not tried anything new, they should have taken the risk of doing something new, instead they have taken the risk of playing safe, which I afraid has backfired. That is movie's biggest drawback. First hour. Important and full of scare-jumps, and interesting stuff but something missing!
But the 2nd half is promising and freaks out everyone. The story plays well. But only thing wrong I found here was quick killing of characters, the screenplay is so fast, there is no time to separate different characters' killing. Very small build up of the fear makes the movie little weaker. Yet, it is a scary movie. And what I felt in the theater was the creepy feeling after the movie. This is the weakest movie of the franchise and still it leaves the audience shocked at the end.
So, if you watch this movie and are getting dull in the first half, just wait, the movie still has something good to offer, and you will not go home unhappy err.. unscared!
Happy Halloween!
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