20131031: Horror Review--Paranormal Activity 4

Paranormal Activity 4: Unrated Edition

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2012, UR, 96 minutes, horror.
2. IMDB: 4.4/10.0 from 32,650 user ratings.  Estimated budget, 5 million USD; domestic gross, over 53 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 24% on the meter; 36% liked it from 114,461 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.2/5.0 from 215,772 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Henry Joost and Ariel Shulman; screenplay by Christopher Landon.
6. Starring: Katie Featherston as Katie, Kathryn Newton as Alex, Matt Shively as Ben, Aiden Lovekamp as Wyatt, Bradie Allen as Robbie.


2. Setup and Plot
1. 'I did not record you, my computer did.'


2. This quote from Ben symbolizes the whole film.  Did you expect me to believe such an obvious lie?  Worse yet, did you expect me to know you were lying, then act like you were not?


3. There is nothing even remotely interesting in this film.  Does its director expect me to act like there was?


4. Ben and Alex are friends.  Alex lives with her two parents and younger brother Wyatt.  Ben is a frequent visitor who likes to record on hand-held and on computer.


5. Across the street is a single mother and her son Robbie.  She gets carted to the hospital one night.  Robbie comes to stay with Alex and her parents, just for a few days.


6. This is a 'jump the shark' moment.  Social Services would come for Robbie.  Done.


7. The parents are presented as clueless, uncaring, usually absent, and far from tech savvy.  Of course, the target demographic seems to be self-involved young people, say, 17-24.  Perhaps hatred and contempt for adults comes with the territory.


8. Alex and Ben decide to video record in the entire house, and they get some footage that looked paranormal to me, but apparently not to them.  When one of the chandeliers falls in daylight, a lot of attention is captured.  About this time, Alex films the house across the street at night, and gets invited to leave.  Wyatt is recorded on his big wheel; I thought someone would react to the 'poltergeist' activity recorded.  But no.


9. When Wyatt follows Robbie to the house across the street, Alex follows them, hand-held camera at work.  The furniture is covered up, but something is still going on at this house.  At this point, Robbie's mother shows up, guesses who Alex is, and thanks her and her family for taking care of Robbie.  Alex takes Wyatt back to their house.  This is at 60 minutes into a 97 minute film, but it seems like a good place to stop.


10. But the film does continue.  The video gets worse, I've filtered out the sound by this point, and the characters continue to be as interesting as mud under my boots.  The SFX are laughable.  Worst of all, the prospect of another sequel is likely; now there is horror.


3. Conclusions
1. Boring, murky, non-engaging.  Please, let it be over.
2. One line summary: Third sequel in a popular series.
3. One star of five; two blackholes for cinematography and screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10 Hand-held cameras.  Built-in laptop cameras.  Badly done.  Wretched editing.  Zero of ten is just not low enough.  Hire some competent cinematographers next time.  I've seen movies with budgets of 50,000 USD that look 20 times better than this hideous mess.  Why should I be spending so much time (around half of the picture) trying to figure out who is on camera?  This thing is appallingly bad.


2. Sound: 2/10 Whenever anything remotely resembling something interesting comes up, the sound is worthless (blaring or silent).  During transitions, there tends to be unexplained booms and bumps.  After an hour of this, with no discernible reason to call this a horror picture, I'm desensitized.  When the sound track goes bump, the movie had conditioned me not to care, not to react.  By the time the depiction of the 'supernatural' elements start, I just don't care.


3. Acting: 4/10 Hire some actors next time; with a budget of 5 million USD, there should be plenty of competent actors ready to do a better job.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 What screenplay?  They shot some film and assembled in post.  Why is the boy Robbie not with Social Services? Why is his mother not under psychiatric care?  Those would be the correct decisions, and would have terminated this mess very much earlier.  One of the most comical foul-ups in the later part of the film was when Alex was dragged across the street, but still manages to keep filming.  This continues right up to her final encounter with the circle-triangle group.  There is no sense to be made of this.