Paranormal
Activity:
The Marked Ones
Hector (Jorge Diaz), Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) and Marisol (Gabrielle
Walsh) are three pals celebrating high school graduation and living in
an apartment complex in Oxnard. Jesse keeps hearing all sorts of crazy
noises coming from the apartment underneath them, which is inhabited by
a woman who keeps the windows covered, acts strangely and often is
referred to as a witch (all in all, I have had worse neighbors in an
apartment building).
Of course, Jesse and Hector decide they must investigate all of this,
and video tape every moment of it (it wouldn’t be Paranormal
Activity, or the year 2014,
without illogical and obsessive videotaping
of everything). So, they sneak a camera into the neighbor’s
place, convince one of the little kids next door to pound on the door
and they break into the apartment when the lady suddenly dies, and
their
buddy, Oscar (Carlos Pratts), is seen running from the crime scene.
Wouldn’t you stop looking for trouble at this point?
Then, weird stuff starts to happen to Jesse, and the rest of the group
is worried something more sinister is at work (AND YOU KNOW IT
IS!!!!!!).
All of the Paranormal Activity
movies have some element of shock and surprise to them, but the best
ones found a little something more special and deeper to get under our
skin. Paranormal Activity: The
Marked Ones doesn’t do
much that you could call special, and you have a better chance of bed
bugs in the theater getting under your skin.
Writer/director Christopher Landon gives us a movie that hits some of
the basics, but never goes beyond them. Sure, we have a few moments
where we are worried about what will pop out from behind the corner or
what might be waiting for our heroes as they make their way through the
dark, but it’s rote. You feel like Landon is following some
sort of recipe calling for a dash of darkness here, a pinch of rumbling
there and a teaspoon of running away there, and he never fills the
movie with enough of them to keep us on the edge of our seats (just
enough to keep you from giving up on the movie altogether).
You’ll enjoy Jesse’s interactions with unseen
figures and you may never look at the game Simon the same ever again,
but those moments are few and far between. None of the actors are asked
to do much here, so you can’t put the blame on them, and
Landon, like the directors and editors of some of the other weaker
Paranormal Activity films, crams most of the
big action into the last
20 minutes to leave the audience feeling like they have seen something
more action-packed like a restaurant that serves an awesome dessert to
make up for a subpar main course.
Plus, the hardcore fans get to see how all of this ties together if
they are eagle-eyed and have good memories (especially when a familiar
character or two show up), but I couldn’t shake the feeling
that Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is just another movie
to keep
the franchise alive and set up yet another sequel in the never ending
pursuit of more cash instead of more story.
Paranormal
Activity: The Marked Ones is rated R for pervasive language, some
violence, graphic nudity and some drug use.
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