PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES misses its mark

RATED- R
RUN TIME- 84 Mins
WRITER(S)- Christopher Landon
STARRING- Andrew Jacobs, Jorge Diaz, and Gabrielle Walsh
DIRECTOR- Christopher Landon



Synopsis taken from IMDb
Jesse begins experiencing a number of disturbing and unexplainable things after the death of his neighbor. As he investigates, it isn't long before Jesse finds he's been marked for possession by a malevolent demonic entity, and it's only a matter of time before he is completely under its control.




Oh boy, where do I begin. This spin-off and fifth installment in the "Paranormal Activity" series is directed by Christopher Landon. Landon only has one other film to his credit directorial wise, and that's "Burning Palms" from back in 2010, which didn't get favorable reviews. This mark in the paranormal franchise is just plain weak. I was really hoping that they'd pick it up a bit after the mess that was "Paranormal Activity 4", but they dropped the ball again, and this time it's even worse.

"The Marked Ones" isn't scary at all. There isn't a single scene where I was the slightest bit scared or even amused. It's not suspenseful, and it relies on quick and cheap jump-scares even more than the previous films. It's the same recycled stuff over and over again. It really makes me wonder if they're honestly even trying anymore. I mean, it's totally amateur looking.

I know that these films aren't made in a lot of time, and I know that they aren't too costly. But, you can really start to see it now. This movie looks like it cost $100 to make. The whole concept is dead, and if they're going to try and keep this thing going, they're gonna have to reinvent the entire concept and get real creative. In my honest opinion, this installment in the series pulled the plug on a series that was surviving off life support. It really begs the question of how are they not straight to video movies by now?

The makeup effects and cgi are honestly laughable. I receive screeners for some independent films with almost no budget that have better makeup effects than the work done in this. Overwhelmingly underwhelming FX to say the least...

 And the characters aren't even likable. The lead characters are total morons and annoying. Stupid characters doing stupid things. What do you do when a demonic entity is catching you when you fall backwards? Apparently, according to the idiots in this movie, you make a great time of it and have jolly good laughs.

When briefly discussing time travel, Hector, the lead character Jesse's best friend, says "I'd time travel to the Bahamas." What the hell? I'm pretty sure genius Hector was thinking of teleporting. This whole ad libbing mess has got to stop if this is what the actors are saying. Again, were they even trying?

The Ouija board is out, and Simon Says is in, didn't you hear? Yeah in this flick the source of contacting the demon is through a Simon Says. Stupidity at its finest. Lame. I'd be ashamed to have my name on this movie.

The ending makes sense, and ties in with the ending of the very first "Paranormal Activity" film. However, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. So I predict we'll be getting some answers in the next film, but I honestly don't care enough anymore at this point to find out the answers. They say you've jumped the shark once you cross a line, well this film just takes you to the ghetto and possesses one dimensional characters.

I'm gonna steal a line from Elvira here and say that this flick is "about an hour and a half too long".

.5 stars out of 5

Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

RATED- R
RUN TIME- 88 MINS
WRITERS- CHRISTOPHER LANDON AND CHAD FEEHAN
STARRING- KATIE FEATHERSTON, KATHRYN NEWTON AND MATT SHIVELY
DIRECTOR- HENRY JOOST AND ARIEL SCHULMAN 



Synopsis taken from IMDb
This story takes place in 2011, five years after Katie killed her boyfriend Micah, sister Kristi, and her husband Daniel and took their baby, Hunter (now named Robbie). Story focuses on Alice and her mom, experiencing weird stuff since the new neighbors (Katie and Robbie) moved in the town.


Paranormal Activity 4 is directed by the same team that did Paranormal Activity 3, which I thought was the best in the trilogy. This film is the sequel to Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) and takes place several years later.

The movie starts off with Alex (Kathryn Newton) recording her younger brother, Wyatt, during a soccer game. We see some family bonding and get to see how the family is. The mother and father are never on the same page and don't get along.

Then we see that there's an ambulance at Robbie's house. Robbie is the really creepy kid next door. Kathryn and Wyatt wonder what happened next door at Robbie's house.

The next day Kathryn's mom brings Robbie over and tells the family that he'll be staying with them for a few days until his mom is able to care for him again. Kathryn isn't particularly happy with this decision, she finds Robbie to be a bad influence on Wyatt as well as being very creepy. She doesn't like him.

Soon after Robbie's arrival,  Kathryn recorded a video of herself sleeping and in the video we see Robbie sneak into her room and lay in bed next to her.

Soon after this disturbing discovery Kathryn has her boyfriend set up all of the laptops in the house to record everything throughout the day in case of any more weird occurrences. I liked Kathryn's boyfriend and I think this film would have been better if he were in it more.

But Robbie's invisible friend, Toby, doesn't like being watched and recorded. And in here lies the terror...

This movie was a total letdown. I couldn't be more disappointed and I didn't even have high expectations. My not having high expectations has nothing to do with my opinion of the other films, I didn't mind them. Nothing great but fun watches. I didn't have high expectations because my interest just isn't there anymore.

One thing these movies are good for is suspense, the fear of knowing something's coming but not knowing how or when. This movie has hardly any suspense, there were maybe 2 scenes that were suspenseful.

The jumps these movies usually give you are few and far between and there isn't many in this one. The 2 key things that this series is known for is absent in this film and that hurts it bad. Without jumps and suspense all you have is webcam videos of people you don't care nothing about because this film didn't even have character development like the other films did. I don't know what they were thinking when they made this film.

In the end I guess what it comes down to is that you can only tear a sheet off of someone or make them levitate so many ways before people realize that your just tweaking things you've done several times before. Feeding this recycled strained idea to us again and feeding off the fact that they've had success with it before.

This film lacks all that made its priors enjoyable and drops the ball. Paranormal Activity 4 is a complete disappointment.

They've about drained this series dry, the fact that it's gone on this long proves that. This cash cow is out of milk, time to move forward. Shaun Monroe said that he thinks the film is only going to be enjoyable to the "die-hard" fans of the series.

THIS FILM GETS 2 REAPER SKULLS OUT OF 5