Review of Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) by Horcrux2007 — 20 Mar 2015

Paranormal Activity 4 is a movie that will primarily be enjoyed by die-hard fans of the franchise, and I can safely say that I am one of those people. By now, you pretty much know what to expect, but this entry does have quite a few tricks up its sleeve.

Unlike the first 3 films, where most of the activity occurs while the characters are sleeping, most of the supernatural stuff happens during the daytime while the protagonist is home alone. This does strike a bit of a different fear because for some reason, houses are always scarier when you're home alone.

Another thing that makes this movie stand out is the "Kinect cam", which displays hundreds of little dots across the living room when all the lights turn off due to the infrared This makes for some really subtle scares that you might not completely catch on the first viewing.

The scares are inconsistent mostly due to the fact that there are quite a few fake-outs in the first half of the film (cat jumping in front of the camera, book falling, etc.), but when the scares work, they're really effective.

It's certainly not a high point in the franchise, but it's still a reasonably fun and sometimes scary movie.