Review of Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014) by Spencer K — 05 Feb 2014

Admittedly after seeing the trailers for this film, I had not an interest in the world to see this film, and I basically dismissed it as just a cash grab piece of garbage. Now officially me having seen the film, I can say I was wrong.

Is is a revolutionary or ground breaking horror film? Absolutely not. Is it a fun, genuinely creepy horror film? Yes, it absolutely is. We have five of these Paranormal Activity film now, and another on the way just this October.

This franchise is starting to feel like the new Saw franchise. (Let's just hope this franchise doesn't get up to eight films.) In my honest opinion, this franchise died when the released the god-awful fourth installment.

And with the movie, while it doesn't completely breathe brand new life into the franchise, I'll say it's definitely a step in the right direction. It had some pretty good acting, commendable direction, a good script, and a surprisingly number of good scares.

The acting was surprisingly pretty good, considering the film is chock-full of newbies. Andrew Jacobs, the young actor who plays Jesse in the film, really surprised me with his performance and I thought he did a great job as the lead.

I don't think I've seen him in anything else, but he definitely has a talent to him, and I can see a bright future for him. He gave a great performance in this and it will be nice to see what else he can do in the future because he definitely has the acting chips for whatever comes his way.

The other main actor in this; Jorge Diaz who played Jesse's friend, Hector brought. A sense of humor into the film and I thought he was a good casting choice and decision for his character to be in the film to bring a sense of lightheartedness and humor to the film, for a little relief.

He gave a good performance and I was really glad his character was included in the film to bring some of the humorous relief that the film needed. He could have easily screwed up his character by making his feel unneeded and annoying, but Diaz did a good job at portraying his character without making him feel unneeded.

Gabrielle Walsh who plays Marisol gave a pretty decent performance as well and it will be nice to see what else she can be in because I can tell she has a talent and it was nice to show her talents in this film.

The directing by Christopher Landon was pretty good, too. Having all these movies be in the "found footage" format, I can see it being kind of a challenge to direct these movies, but Landon did it well.

It may be shaky cam, (But how could it not be?) he was able to capture every scene well and I always knew what was going on, so the shaky cam never got out of hand and you could tell that he had it under control without going overboard with it.

He also had a way of doing that thing that all of the Paranormal Activity films do, where the camera will like lag out and sort of get fuzzy and stop for a second then when it re-focuses there will be this creepy figure standing behind the character, well I don't think this movie did that very much, but if I remember correctly that it did, Landon didn't make it feel like a forced sort of jump scare and it was actually necessary to the scene when it would do that thing and it was actually very creepy because the scene actually benefited it because it worked with the scene, and it wasn't just thrown in there as a lame jump scare, that these films know so well.

The directing by Christopher Landon was a very commendable effort on his part, and the direction worked well for the film without it ever feeling forced or unneeded. The script had some problems to it, though.

Most of the dialogue between the characters was very cheesy and sometimes plain laughable. It was very cliche and never original, and it's just the type of dialogue that you think to have in a demonic possession movie.

I mean not all of it was mediocre, I did actually laugh a few times. Most of the lines that Jorge Diaz's character said, u actually found myself laughing pretty hard at some of the things he said and did.

He had some pretty clever lines and I laughed quite a few times. However, I did fun myself cringing at a few lines of dialogue. Some were just so choppily written and just so freaking corny. For the most part it was a pretty lazily written script with mediocre and laughable dialogue throughout, but I did laugh a few times at some of the jokes and the things that one character did.

Also, I think the change of setting really did help the film a lot. We were all so used to seeing that house or that neighborhood with Katie or her sister, so it was nice to see a fresh, new setting and environment to behold.

I did think the plot, however not very original, did work for the film and it had its advantages to it. It didn't do anything that the other Paranormal Activity films overused, but it was played by the same formula that do many demonic possession films do.

However, I did think there were a number if considerable scares that were present in the film. I caught myself sometimes jumping in my seat or chewing on my fingernails, because honestly it was pretty intense and actually pretty scary.

There was a lot of actually scary things that do happen in the film. While some may not have been completely new, but the ones that I do remember were actually genuinely very creepy. And the atmosphere of the film was just very creepy.

All the demonic and satanic things, and all the stuff about the witchcraft was actually seriously creepy. And the final 25-30 minutes were very scary and intense when the go into the certain houses (I won't spoil anything) but when they get to those certain places, it gets pretty scary.

Also, I especially liked how it connected everything to the other films at the end of the movie. It explained the ending of one of the earlier films and it made everything else clear about the other films and everything made a little more sense and was a little clearer.

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones features good acting and direction, genuinely very creepy scares throughout, and I liked the last 30 minutes and how everything wrapped up at the end. However, it had a very weak script and it's not going to convert haters of the franchise of the series already, and it doesn't breathe completely new life into the franchise, but it's most definitely a step in the right direction.

For a technical fifth horror sequel AND a spinoff that came out in January, it's a pretty good movie. Recommended for a creepy, fun time.