X
- 2012
- R
- Paramount Pictures
- 1 h 28 m
- 2012
- R
- Paramount Pictures
- 1 h 28 m
Summary Five years after the events that led to the disappearance of Katie and Hunter, young Alice begins experiencing strange phenomena in her home; especially after a kid named Robbie moves in next door. When Robbie's caretaker ends up in the hospital, he starts living with Alice's family. That's when things go from creepy to paranormal.
Directed By: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Written By: Christopher Landon, Chad Feehan, Oren Peli
- 2012
- R
- Paramount Pictures
- 1 h 28 m
- 2012
- R
- Paramount Pictures
- 1 h 28 m
Paranormal Activity 4
40
4.7
Where to Watch
Summary Five years after the events that led to the disappearance of Katie and Hunter, young Alice begins experiencing strange phenomena in her home; especially after a kid named Robbie moves in next door. When Robbie's caretaker ends up in the hospital, he starts living with Alice's family. That's when things go from creepy to paranormal.
Directed By: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Written By: Christopher Landon, Chad Feehan, Oren Peli
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 22 Critic Reviews
40
9% Positive
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
68% Mixed
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
23% Negative
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 22 Critic Reviews
40
9% Positive
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
68% Mixed
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
23% Negative
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
The film is heavily reliant on jump scares, but its best moments are the ones before them, when the tension builds without the benefit of escalating music to queue you in to the approaching shock.
Catfish pair Joost and Ariel Schulman keep the franchise firmly on track with a satisfyingly scary fourth instalment.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 246 User Ratings
4.7
29% Positive
71 Ratings
71 Ratings
35% Mixed
87 Ratings
87 Ratings
36% Negative
88 Ratings
88 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 246 User Ratings
4.7
29% Positive
71 Ratings
71 Ratings
35% Mixed
87 Ratings
87 Ratings
36% Negative
88 Ratings
88 Ratings
This movie was crazy scary i was physically shaking holding my computer the end BOOM!!!!! Right in your face demon this movie is terrifying but otherwise one of the coolest horror movies of all time i don't know why everybody hates it its so awesome i recommend for people who like a scary horror movie BUT Not for kids thirteen and under the last 5:30 seconds are really intense
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best paranormal activity movie yet, they were all amazing actors/actresses i would definitely want them to make a sequel! everything was amazing about this movie. it made me jump throughout the whole movie so i think bravo to the directors! and it is 100% worth watching so! yeah watch it BEST ONE YET!
10/10
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The ending steals actionably from "The Blair Witch Project," the movie that helped spawn these first-person chillers.
Screenwriter Christopher Landon, along with co-directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, make a truly lame attempt at establishing a supernatural mythology to explain all this, but their real energies go to amping up the jarring sound cues, darting shadows, and last-shot shocker (so goofily weird this time that you'll laugh out loud) that make this franchise a perennial crowd-pleaser.
There's a point at which movies become only merchandise, and the Paranormal franchise may be heading for that nexus, that nadir.
This is one horror franchise that's burned itself out, and then some – not even the rare shock cuts to nothing much at all will startle anyone over the age of 8.
The scares were there, cheesy dialogue in parts, but that finale was intense. This was my favorite film out of the four movies so far, and with the Facebook campaign centering around Jacob DeGloshi for PA5, it makes it even more eerie.
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"While not quite on par with the first two Paranormal Activities, its was better than the third installment though. Its not gonna give you nightmares, but it does have some tense buildups and a pretty good finale, although i wish it was better." B-
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It needs to be said, my expectations weren't high for Paranormal Activity 4…well, high considering this is the fourth feature in horror franchise that's part of subgenre (found footage) quickly wearing out its welcome. I found the first three Paranormal Activity movies fantastically haunting with their minimalist approach to displaying the titular phenomena, building from oddities that could be rationalized to totally terrifying and unexplainable violence caught on tape. The locked perspective of their cameras similarly made me feel trapped within their frame, and directing team Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman—of Catfish infamy—took this found footage aspect to a terrifying new realm in Paranormal Activity 3. With these two back for 4, I anticipated not only an intriguing continuation of the franchise's growing mythos, but also some innovative new scares within the format. Unfortunately, the most shocking part of Paranormal Activity 4 is how far it missed the mark.
The feature begins with a brief refresher of the end of Paranormal Activity 2, where a fully possessed Katie (Katie Featherston) slaughters her sister then kidnaps baby Hunter before strolling off into the night and out of range of the late family's security system cameras. Cut to five years later in Nevada where Alex, an adorable 15-year-old girl (Kathryn Newton) who inexplicably always carries her video camera, begins documenting the bizarre events that plague her and her family after the weird little boy-next-door stays with them. Robbie (Brady Allen) is a sullen child who lurks around their property late at night until his single mom is carted off by an ambulance, forcing Alex's family to take him in. Luckily for Alex, her goofy boyfriend (Matt Shively) "accidentally" recorded video of her sleeping, and caught the little creep up to no good. The teens turn all the family computers into surveillance cameras in hopes of proving to Alex's self-involved parents something strange is going on.
First off, teens toting cameras is a red flag for the found footage genre, as it's generally a lazy screenwriter device to justify why the camera is always around at pertinent moments that should seem innocuous to the characters. Because all young people record every inane moment of their life, right? But this is only the beginning of the plot holes that riddle Paranormal Activity 4, many of which I can't get into without spoiling the film's final act. Suffice to say, key characters eventually abandon their acquired knowledge and established motivations in service to the plot, making for an ending that is as senseless as it is frustrating. Between the found footage convention and the established rules of this franchise, the climax is a foregone (read: predictable) conclusion. So getting attached to this brave girl who is fighting valiantly to save her family from this evil is not only sad, it's a little boring.
To their credit, Joost and Schulman start off strong. They deftly establish the geography of the family's home so that the action and camera work that plays out later is easy to follow, and the audience is likewise primed for where to watch when things get worrisomely quiet. They also prove savvy at setting up shots, including open doorways and peppering the frame with idly moving objects like a swaying bead curtain, making us nervously scan the background for a possible threat. However, these setups payoff less than one would hope with some missed opportunities and a barrage of false alarm scares that are fun in the moment, but ultimately kill the brewing tension. There's more downtime here than the other movies have. As the nights plod along with more and more bizarre events, they peak at an insane supernatural event, cut to black and then pick up in the light of day with no lasting impact. Rather than building a prolonged and deepening anxiety through slowly mounting these attacks with no sense of relief as the first three films did, Paranormal Activity 4's stuttered structure is episodic, and at 88 minutes the film still feels long.
At the end of the film we know little more about this invisible evil spirit or what his plans are for Katie and Hunter than we did at the end of the third or second film. Then instead of innovation, the directors give into jump scares and false alarm gags to keep the audience invested, and in doing so lose the mounting suspense and dread that set the earlier films apart from their imitators. In short, Paranormal Activity 4 is more startling than scary and does more damage to the franchise than good.
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Same old, same freaking old. The final 15-20 minutes of the film are okay, the rest of the film is plain boring and pathetic. I don't know why they keep making films like this, the first installment was good, no doubts, but they're not offering anything new now. This is the worst movie in the Paranormal Activity franchise, not impressed me in any aspect whatsoever. The name of the film is Paranormal Activity but it doesn't offer any kind of paranormal activity or even if it does, that's negligible because that won't give you any scares, how ironic is that! When the third film came out and I watched it, the first thing that came into my mind was, "What could be worse than this?". Today, I found the answer to that question after I finished watching this film.
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Production Company
Paramount Pictures,
Blumhouse Productions,
Solana Films,
Room 101
Release Date Oct 18, 2012
Duration 1 h 28 m
Rating R
Tagline It's Closer Than You Think
Awards
Young Artist Awards
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Fangoria Chainsaw Awards
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
