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Paranormal Activity 4 Review

December 4, 2012

In an attempt to play catch up with all over due reviews, I'm condensing the length of my standard reviews into mini ones on the less than impressive recent films. Without further ado, here's my review of the mediocre Paranormal Activity. Same spooks, more gadgets.

In my attempt to catch up with my incredibly belated reviews, and try to clear the backlog; I’m writing very short posts on some of the more disappointing films that have come out over the past few months. First up is the latest edition of the Paranormal Activity franchise.

In Paranormal Activity 4 we see a new family seemingly spooked by the same entity which troubled Katie and her family five years previously. When the mysterious Robbie befriends the family’s youngest child Wyatt, strange things start to happen around the house. Luckily, their pad is kitted out with enough XBOXs and MacBooks to document the things that go bump in the night.

For a more comprehensive review of the film, click here to listen to the podcast. Don’t forget to check out my review of the franchise here, where I go into further detail why these films are such guilty pleasures of mine.

Predictable and as product placement-y as it ever, Paranormal Activity 4 is enjoyable; especially around the Hallowe’en period. It’s playful, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. The frequent long quiet scenes followed by loud bangs are enough to keep a horror novice like myself jumping, with a climactic shock level similar to the previous films. Yet this time around, one of the biggest shocks is a creepy kid wearing socks with sandals.