Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension - directed by Gregory Plotkin
Starring: Chris J Murray, Brit Shaw, Ivy George, Dan Gill, Chloe Csengery, Jessica Tyler Brown, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Cara Pifko, Michael Krawic, Don McManus
Running Time: 88 minutes
Rated: R13 - Mild profanity and violence - mostly bloodless
I have had a similar ride with the Paranormal Activity series as I have with a couple of other horror franchises.
Like the Saw films and the Friday the Thirteenth films I reached a point where I just gave up.
They were just tired rehashes and they felt like they had run out of ideas after the first sequels.
But I returned to them later and I am glad that I did.
Horror is still my favourite genre and as anyone who loves it knows you have to do so in spite of itself.
Horror movies can be very formulaic - spawning sequel after sequel because they are cheap and have a good afterlife on dvd and tv.
I ended up enjoying the entire Saw series and every single Friday the Thirteenth flick (yes even part 5 which I actually consider underrated)
So long as the traps in the Saw movies are deviously gory and so long as Jason manages a few imaginative kills I am happy to watch them time and time again.
So it is with the Paranormal Activity movies.
They are all pretty much exactly the same and they all even tend to end exactly the same way.
But they are cleverly made and for me are that rarity of the genre - genuinely scary.... usually.
The addition of 3D to the series had me really excited for this latest movie.
So much so in fact that I ducked out yesterday on my lunch break and picked up a blu-ray copy of the last movie- "The Marked Ones".
Up until last night it was the only one of the series that I hadn't seen and I wanted to be fully up to date ready for the sixth movie.
Fans will know the setup - the movie is entirely made up of footage shot by the participants.
In this case it is brothers Mike and Ryan (Chris J Murray and Dan Gill).
Ryan and his wife Emily (the stupidly gorgeous Brit Shaw) have moved into a nice new house with their young daughter Leila.
For a 3D movie the first few minutes are decidedly flat but soon a rather clever gimmick is revealed.
The men find a camera in a box and when they use it (as they will for the remainder of the film) it makes everything look 3D.
And what good 3D it is too.
The depth of the frame is excellent and it stands as one of the more effective uses of 3D that I have seen.
One of the first things that we see is an odd smoke like apparition and the camera swoops right into it making the audience feel like they are surrounded by it.
It is very, very good.
When things turn nasty it also adds another level of course as 'things' come flying right at the audience.
As the camera moves around corners and under beds it also adds a little more suspense.
Bravo to the filmmakers for the utilisation of the 3D then.
Not so much credit is due in a couple of other areas however.
As scarily effective as the movie is for the first hour it cannot maintain the pace and things come unstuck for the finale.
I will not spoil anything but this movie seems hellbent on taking the series in a direction that it can't really return from.
Maybe it is a good idea - maybe the series was running out of ideas but this film alters the course very strongly and I wonder where the next film will go.
The issue for me in doing what this film does is that the scares all but dried up in the second half.
It is so glaringly noticeable because up until then there was a marvelously well paced ramping up of weird events leading to out and out 'get the hell out of the house' moments.
You know the stuff - it's when the mysterious events like moving lights and strange noises that can be rationalised by a dubious mind turn into apparitions and people being shoved to the ground by invisible forces and the only thing left to do is say 'The hell with the mortgage - we are off to a motel 6'.
The script does make some attempts to explain why the family stays in the house and they seem reasonable enough in movie terms at least.
A priest in fact tells them that moving won't help leading me to wonder if you can sue a church for criminal negligence.
Emily's sister Skyler (Olivia Taylor Dudley) is there initially to be Miss Exposition. She is into Feng Shui and is open to believing in other-wordly things.
Her willingness to walk into dark places to investigate odd noises and strange visions provides many of the scares early on.
And they do work- there was much screeching and jumping going on in my session tonight.
Both Taylor Dudley and Brit Shaw are beautiful women and even the two lead men are a bit hunkier and a bit more experienced as actors.
This is the first film in the series with a production budget above $5,000,000 clocking in at exactly double that but the ramped up talent and the inclusion of 3D doesn't make up for a weak finale.
The oscillating fan scene in part 3 is one of my favourites from the series and there is barely an effect in it.
Sometimes the simple stuff is what works best and even though there is plenty of that here the climax forgoes it for more showy stuff.
At the half way point this film felt like it was heading towards being one the very best in the series but from there the scares just dried up for me.
It expended a lot of ideas and a lot of 3D tricks far too early.
One of the strengths of this series has always been how good the movies are at faking us out.
The tension and the scares are often due to the anticipation of a scare that never arrives or one that is not paranormal in nature- someone playing a trick on someone or an unexpected knock on the door.
Ghost Dimension exhausts all of its tricks in the first hour and I was way ahead of every scare long before the rushed conclusion tossed everything but the kitchen sink at me.
To be fair it is an audacious finale in many ways and is very well shot- I was just disappointed in how comfortably and steady pulsed I was through the last fifteen minutes.
This one falls far short of my favourite of the series- part 3.
Maybe it was because it was the first that I saw but the third installment is brutally efficient with the scares.
Ghost Dimension is about as good as the last two - Part 4 and The Marked Ones and in fairness that is probably perfectly fine.
Thanks god for that awesome 3D - without it I might be calling it the weakest in the series.
RATING: 71/ 100
CONCLUSION: Think of this as Paranormal Poltergeist Exorcist Activity and you'll get the idea of how this movie attempts to reinvent the series. It is successful enough but pound for pound this is one of the least scary in the series and that is strange given how effective the 3D is. And where is the wonderful Katie Featherston??
Running Time: 88 minutes
Rated: R13 - Mild profanity and violence - mostly bloodless
I have had a similar ride with the Paranormal Activity series as I have with a couple of other horror franchises.
Like the Saw films and the Friday the Thirteenth films I reached a point where I just gave up.
They were just tired rehashes and they felt like they had run out of ideas after the first sequels.
But I returned to them later and I am glad that I did.
Horror is still my favourite genre and as anyone who loves it knows you have to do so in spite of itself.
Horror movies can be very formulaic - spawning sequel after sequel because they are cheap and have a good afterlife on dvd and tv.
I ended up enjoying the entire Saw series and every single Friday the Thirteenth flick (yes even part 5 which I actually consider underrated)
So long as the traps in the Saw movies are deviously gory and so long as Jason manages a few imaginative kills I am happy to watch them time and time again.
So it is with the Paranormal Activity movies.
They are all pretty much exactly the same and they all even tend to end exactly the same way.
But they are cleverly made and for me are that rarity of the genre - genuinely scary.... usually.
The addition of 3D to the series had me really excited for this latest movie.
So much so in fact that I ducked out yesterday on my lunch break and picked up a blu-ray copy of the last movie- "The Marked Ones".
Up until last night it was the only one of the series that I hadn't seen and I wanted to be fully up to date ready for the sixth movie.
Fans will know the setup - the movie is entirely made up of footage shot by the participants.
In this case it is brothers Mike and Ryan (Chris J Murray and Dan Gill).
For a 3D movie the first few minutes are decidedly flat but soon a rather clever gimmick is revealed.
The men find a camera in a box and when they use it (as they will for the remainder of the film) it makes everything look 3D.
And what good 3D it is too.
The depth of the frame is excellent and it stands as one of the more effective uses of 3D that I have seen.
One of the first things that we see is an odd smoke like apparition and the camera swoops right into it making the audience feel like they are surrounded by it.
It is very, very good.
When things turn nasty it also adds another level of course as 'things' come flying right at the audience.
As the camera moves around corners and under beds it also adds a little more suspense.
Bravo to the filmmakers for the utilisation of the 3D then.
Not so much credit is due in a couple of other areas however.
As scarily effective as the movie is for the first hour it cannot maintain the pace and things come unstuck for the finale.
I will not spoil anything but this movie seems hellbent on taking the series in a direction that it can't really return from.
Maybe it is a good idea - maybe the series was running out of ideas but this film alters the course very strongly and I wonder where the next film will go.
The issue for me in doing what this film does is that the scares all but dried up in the second half.
 |
| Brit Shaw |
You know the stuff - it's when the mysterious events like moving lights and strange noises that can be rationalised by a dubious mind turn into apparitions and people being shoved to the ground by invisible forces and the only thing left to do is say 'The hell with the mortgage - we are off to a motel 6'.
The script does make some attempts to explain why the family stays in the house and they seem reasonable enough in movie terms at least.
A priest in fact tells them that moving won't help leading me to wonder if you can sue a church for criminal negligence.
Emily's sister Skyler (Olivia Taylor Dudley) is there initially to be Miss Exposition. She is into Feng Shui and is open to believing in other-wordly things.
Her willingness to walk into dark places to investigate odd noises and strange visions provides many of the scares early on.
And they do work- there was much screeching and jumping going on in my session tonight.
Both Taylor Dudley and Brit Shaw are beautiful women and even the two lead men are a bit hunkier and a bit more experienced as actors.
This is the first film in the series with a production budget above $5,000,000 clocking in at exactly double that but the ramped up talent and the inclusion of 3D doesn't make up for a weak finale.
The oscillating fan scene in part 3 is one of my favourites from the series and there is barely an effect in it.
Sometimes the simple stuff is what works best and even though there is plenty of that here the climax forgoes it for more showy stuff.
At the half way point this film felt like it was heading towards being one the very best in the series but from there the scares just dried up for me.
It expended a lot of ideas and a lot of 3D tricks far too early.
One of the strengths of this series has always been how good the movies are at faking us out.
The tension and the scares are often due to the anticipation of a scare that never arrives or one that is not paranormal in nature- someone playing a trick on someone or an unexpected knock on the door.Ghost Dimension exhausts all of its tricks in the first hour and I was way ahead of every scare long before the rushed conclusion tossed everything but the kitchen sink at me.
To be fair it is an audacious finale in many ways and is very well shot- I was just disappointed in how comfortably and steady pulsed I was through the last fifteen minutes.
This one falls far short of my favourite of the series- part 3.
Maybe it was because it was the first that I saw but the third installment is brutally efficient with the scares.
Ghost Dimension is about as good as the last two - Part 4 and The Marked Ones and in fairness that is probably perfectly fine.
Thanks god for that awesome 3D - without it I might be calling it the weakest in the series.
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