Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) Review

"He does not like you."

-Robbie

Five years after the events of the first film, Paranormal Activity 4 follows the Nelson family.  When their neighbor, a single woman, is taken to the hospital, the Nelson's agree to let her son, Robbie (Brady Allen), stay with them until she is well again.  Soon, strange activity begins occurring and Alex Nelson (Kathryn Newton) sets up cameras to record it, but can she stop it or are the Nelson's already doomed?

What Works:

I don't like kids and I usually find them creepy, so it's nice that we're not supposed to like Robbie or Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp) in this movie.  They both do an effective job at being unlikable and creepy, so good job on both actors.

Alex is a very solid protagonist and I like how proactive she is.  I have some issues with the casting of her boyfriend, Ben (Matt Shively), which I'll get to later, but they have good chemistry.  Ben is also a likable character as he is goofball, but mostly takes Alex seriously.  And even when is skeptical, he comes around pretty quickly.  It's refreshing for the main love interest of these movies to take their significant other seriously.  It's the first time that has happened in the series.

There are a couple of good scares in the movie.  The chandelier is really well done and the levitating knife added a lot of tension to the scene where Holly (Alexondra Lee) cooks dinner.

Finally, the final scare of the movie is really awesome and totally caught me by surprise.  As Alex is escaping, she runs into an army of witches.  It's an awesome scare and a solid ending to the movie.

What Sucks:

The biggest problem with Paranormal Activity 4 is it doesn't make sense.  It's revealed that Katie (Katie Featherson) from the previous films is the Nelson's neighbors and Robbie's mother.  It's fair to assume that Robbie is actually Hunter from Paranormal Activity 2.  That totally makes sense, but that isn't the case.  Somehow Wyatt Nelson, who is adopted, is actually Hunter.  How did that happen?  How did he end up getting adopted?  How did Katie, who is possessed by a demon, lose him?  And where did Robbie come from?  It makes no sense and we get no answers in the film.  It's a disappointing follow-up to Hunter's kidnapping, that's for sure.

The scares as a whole are the least impressive of the series and there isn't a truly great one like the kitchen scares in 2 and 3.  The chandelier and knife scares are good, but the rest are pretty lackluster.

Also lackluster are the kills.  Paranormal Activity has the highest body count of the series with 4, but they are the least interesting deaths of the series.  We've seen all of these kills done before and better in the previous films.

What's interesting to me about this series is watching the members of a household deal with the strange events occurring in the house.  Unfortunately Alex's parents, Holly and Doug (Stephen Dunham), get basically nothing to do and don't find out about the haunting until their death scenes.  It doesn't help that Holly is an extremely unlikable character and generally just the worst, but never gets any development.

Finally, while the actors who play Alex and Ben do a good job, I find their casting uncomfortable.  They are boyfriend and girlfriend, but Kathryn Newton was 15 when they made this while Matt Shively was 21.  It's a really uncomfortable age-gap and even though the characters they play are closer to the same age, it's still not great.  I've seen both actors in other things and they were both no-names when this movie came out.  If I didn't know the actors outside of this movie, maybe it wouldn't have bothered me so much, but I wish they had cast actors closer in age than this.

Verdict:

Paranormal Activity 4 is easily the worst of the series so far.  While the two lead characters are solid, the kids are creepy, and the ending is awesome, this movie feels like the filmmakers forgot what made the first 3 good.  The kills and scares are underwhelming, some of the characters are dull and unlikable, and the story doesn't make sense.  It's a very disappointing follow-up to the earlier films.

 4/10: Bad