Another Paranormal Activity was released recently with a whole new story. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones review after the jump.
Another year, another Paranormal Activity movie. In what was a bold move, The Marked Ones moves away from the story of Katie and instead focuses on some Latino teens in California. Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) has graduated and decides to celebrate by purchasing a camera from a pawn shop. Along with his best friend Hector (Jorge Diaz) the two decide to film themselves as they just have fun.
A strange old lady who lives in the apartment below Jesse’s is murdered and the two try to find out what has happened like a pair of amateur private detectives. They soon find out that witchcraft and coven is involved, just as Jesse inherits some kind of strange spiritual guardian.
As per usual with these types of found-footage films, the makers still haven’t found a good reason for the main characters to carry on filming when all hell breaks loose around them. Are weird children with no eyes jump out in front of you? No problem, keep filming. Is a strange witch running after you with a massive knife? No problem, just keep filming. Of course, if they didn’t keep filming, we wouldn’t know what was going on, but maybe they could at least have the camera attached to some kind of device attached to the main characters clothing?
Whilst Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones does well with some of its scares, we have mostly seen it all before. Some of the effects are great and look expensive, especially compared to the cheaply made original.
What The Marked Ones did well was to link the series together. For the majority of the film, we thought we were watching a story that may have supernatural occurrences, has nothing to do with the rest of the series. Yet we were wrong, the whole story ties in together nicely.
Overall Thoughts:
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is far from ground breaking, but it is a decent instalment in the series. There is also lessons to be learned here – if one of your weird neighbours happens to be murdered, don’t go snooping around their property.
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