PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES

After watching the latest Paranormal Activity I'm starting to think the evil witch-demon convent are over thinking their recruitment strategy. I'm sure a simple advertisement in the back of a local paper or craigslist would get better results. I have written a draft letter to get them started:


Evil Spirit Looking For Friends To Play With Over Summer.

Lovable yet incompetent teenagers needed to play with possesed "Simon Says" toy, fighting blankets, midnight games of hide and seek with friendly witches and trips to alternative dimension. Contact creepy old lady to find out more.

This approach might be easier than a highly elaborate plan to mark children from birth. It gets even more elaborate when they then have to find and steal said children with the hopes of creating a demon army. I am pretty sure they would have enough emotionally damaged kids that would sign up after reading my ad. After several disappointing sequels Paranormal Activity is back with an offshoot called The Marked Ones. I am not sure how it fits into the series but as a stand-alone movie it is rather dull. Nevertheless the true horror fans will continue to see these movie until the apocalypse starts.

The Marked Ones does suffer from an identity crisis. For some reason more comedic elements have been added to this installment. This really undercuts the horror elements of this movie. We begin being introduced to a new series of characters, Jesse, Hector and Marisol, who prove quite likable as you watch them have do mundane things like surf the internet, do washing and play basketball. Eventually the movie starts to play towards the horror elements with a humorous game of Simon Says with a possessed toy with four colours. When Jesse starts asking "yes or no" questions the demon replies with either pushing green for yes and red for no. They do this 3 times in the movie!! And it is never eerie 

Even the build up to Jesse being possessed feels underwhelming. The movie never really explores his descent into anti-social behavior and borderline sociopath tendencies. They just kind of happen after he's told they will by another marked one. Once Jesse does turns evil they have him disappear until the end of the movie. This conveniently lets Hector and the Marisol figure out how to rescue Jesse with the help of a stereotypical latino gangster. Its a shame the film didn't take a chance with this old and tired formula. This movie could have been a chance to reinvent the franchise. Instead we were given a uneven movie that is more humor than horror. Hopefully the next Paranormal Activity will move beyond the possession plotline and actually bring some demons out to play. I am sure that they will be scarier than more scary flying sheets.
 
1 out of 5 demon possessed waffles