Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

For a franchise based around one idea – found footage of creepy hauntings – the Paranormal Activity series has proved to be surprisingly consistent when it comes to quality. That is to say, every second film (the second and fourth) are a waste of time, while the first, third and now fifth actually manage to find new ways to get scares out of the old formula.
Here the initial twist is that it’s an all-Latino cast: the year is 2012, and in the Los Angeles suburb of Oxnard high school graduate Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) lives with his dad and grandmother in a block of flats above a creepy woman named Anna, who everyone thinks is a witch. When Anna’s found murdered, everyone blames one of Jesse’s classmates; Jesse goes exploring her flat with his buddy Hector (Jorge Diaz) and surprise surprise, the place is full of links to the earlier films in the series, including old VHS tapes of the childhood of previous victims Katie and Kristi (as seen in the third film). Jesse wakes up the next morning with a strange bite mark on his arm; soon he’s developing unusual abilities which seem pretty cool just so long as you don’t actually think about what they might really mean.
For a film barely over 80 minutes this packs a lot in, and pretty much all of it works. The Latino stuff is sketched in just enough to give a sense of a community the likes of which we don’t normally see in mainstream US cinema, the typical shocks are done well, and unlike the last instalment, which tried to broaden out the series’ mythology but just ended up draining it of mystery, this goes in a couple of strange directions to create an ending that really pays off.
Whether the next film – already due in a few months – can build on this sidebar remains to be seen; even if it can’t, this is more than scary enough to stand on its own.
Written by Anthony Morris