Paranormal Activity 4 Movie Review

Paranormal Activity 4
                                                          

Paranormal Activity 4 is an American supernatural horror movie released in 2012. This movie is written by Christopher Landon and directed by the same directors of Paranormal Activity 3, Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost. Till now (May 2013), this is last movie of the famous series of Paranormal Activity.  The major roles of this film are played by Kathryn Newton, Matt Shively, Brady Allen, Aiden Lovekamp, Alexondra Lee, Stephen Dunham and Katie Featherston. 

A scene from Paranormal Activity 4

Plot:

At the very beginning of this movie, we see a small footage from the previous movie of this series, Paranormal Activity 3. Then a text says that, the little boy named Hunter and his evil possessed elder sister gone missing and were never found again (after the incidents of Paranormal Activity 3).

Then the story of this movie starts, which revolves around a teenage girl named Alex. She has a friend, who has some kind of crush on her and flirts with her several times. Alex’s family consists of her parents and a little brother. 

One day, a women and her little son (nearly of the same age of Alex’s young brother) rent the house beside Alex’s. The new neighbors are not very keen to socialize with Alex’s family. The little boy doesn’t talk much. One day, Alex and her friend find that little boy in Alex’s tree house. Late at that night, Alex sees some cars including an ambulance in front of her neighbor’s house. Next morning, her mother tells her that the women has fallen sick suddenly and has been shifted to hospital, so the little boy will stay with them for a few days, as his mother has no relatives to take care of that boy.

Since the beginning, the boy behaves very strangely. He becomes good friend with Alex’s brother and they regularly talk with their imaginary friend. He also draws strange symbols on the back of Alex’s brother one day.  Alex’s friend keeps recording Alex’s movement from her computer, which also picks weird behavior of that boy. One day Alex’s friend does something with their TV game which fills the room with infrared dots. Then the camera inside that game also starts picking paranormal activities. The friend also turns different computer at different parts of the house to catch video footage of the surrounding. These cameras catch enough evidences of paranormal presence, but no one watches those footages other than the viewers of this movie.

In the next few days, strange things start to happen all over the house. Like strange noises and footsteps, falling of the lamps, levitation of sleeping Alex and drowning of Alex’s little brother on bathtub for a long time and so on. One night Alex hears some noises from the garage when no one was at home. When she went there to check, she got trapped inside the garage and the car starts on its own, creating dense smoke inside the garage. She was almost killed before she could get in the car break the garage door. None of her parents believe in these unusual incidents. The video game camera records a footage where a small boy’s presence was seen behind Alex’s brother and another where Alex’s brother was arguing with an invisible person about his name not being Hunter.

While these things kept on happening, one night Alex saw some cars in front of her neighbor’s house when the house was supposed to be empty. 

Alex and her friend takes these activities seriously while their parents don’t. But the demonic presence does not stay peaceful for long with its game of scaring people. Soon it strikes violently to reach its target, that is, to take Alex’s little brother.

Kathryn Newton In Paranormal Activity 4

My reviews about this movie:

First of all, I liked this movie like all others of this series. But I must say, I’m a fan of this Paranormal Activity series, so I’m not sure how much the other people (not fan of this series) will like it.

The plot is good. I must say, the plot, specially the endings are almost same for all of the movies  of this series which is getting a little boring. There is no surprise or no twist of story at the end. Whoever has watched the other movies of this series can guess what is happening at the end and this movie will not disappoint you, which is not a good thing in this case. The excitement of Paranormal Activity 1 is long gone.

The acting, makeups and the special effects are also not bad, at least nothing you can complain. Same goes for the dialogues. Kathryn Newton specially looked very cute and charming in here.

I like the idea about how the cameras were set all over the house. But it seemed unusual how nobody checked the recordings for most of the paranormal activities. 

If I’m not wrong, this is the first movie of the series which will show you the ghost or the demon directly and clearly. I felt this has reduced the beauty of this movie. Remember, the Paranormal Activity (the first one) was a beautiful and scary movie and that one didn’t show the ghost at all, only showed the presence of the ghost. 

So, overall, it’s a good horror movie I’d say. If you are fan of Paranormal Activity series, you will like it. If you’re not, I can’t say about you. But surely, its worth a try.

If you’ve seen it, then how do you like it? Feel free to comment on my reviews.

For those how are interested,

IMDB Link: Paranormal Activity 4 IMDB
Wikipedia link: Paranormal Activity 4 Wiki