You know what they really needed after the first three Paranormal Activity movies? Another one. It's not enough that the already quite weak premise was outlined in the first movie, explained more in the second and somehow given a prequel in the third. Don't get me wrong, the first couple weren't too bad, but a Paranormal Activity every year, we do not need. Because it's all the same shit all over again.
After being treated to a "last time on Paranormal Activity" mini montage, we are once again thrust into a suburban house populated by a family who can't seem to live without a camera or laptop strapped to their face, even when they're pants-shittingly scared. So everything is being filmed, even before the "activity" has begun, meaning we're given half an hour of random people doing random things, trying to give us some kind of connection to this very real family, including at least five minute's worth of Kinect advertising, which is so obnoxious that the Kinect itself becomes a plot point.
Only after these unnecessary introductions do things start moving along, but only at a snail's pace. We have the token Paranormal Activity ghosty noise hanging around at night, before some shit falls off shelves, while our heroes jump every time someone comes through a door. It's a slow burner, like all the others, and everything mildly interesting happens in the last five minutes. By then I'd lost interest, and had received no explanation on how this movie advances the overall plot in any way. Sure, the woman from the first film is in it, but she just seems to be shoved into an otherwise unconnected environment, and told to act really spooky.
In the end, it failed to hold my interest. At least the first three movies tried to introduce different things, while Paranormal Activity 4 just reuses the same ideas, crams them all into an hour and a half and still manages to be boring. It's like a clip show where the clips are badly produced shadows of their former selves. It may be good at making juveniles poo themselves whenever a jump scare happens, but this is not a good movie.
My rating: 1/5
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