This past Friday, the fourth “Paranormal Activity” was released, providing even more twists to the already-growing plot introduced in the first three movies.In this movie, it picked up showing a new family with a mom, dad, young boy named Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp) and a young teen named Alex (Kathryn Newton) with her boyfriend, Ben (Matt Shively).
As time progresses, the boy across the street, Robbie (Brady Allen), ends up staying with the family when his mom, Katie from the previous movies, “gets ill” and goes to the hospital. During Robbie’s stay at the house, he claims to have an imaginary friend. Although the family doesn’t take this seriously at first, they soon begin to see the reality of Robbie’s imaginary friend, who is a demon.
They begin witnessing all the strange occurrences taking place in the household. Alex and Ben are the main witnesses of the phenomenon, setting up all the laptops in the house to constantly record.
They witness both of the kids getting up in the middle of the night and talking with demons, along with Robbie drawing strange symbols on Wyatt and telling him about his “friend.”
Using Robbie, the demon eventually lures Wyatt in, killing him and taking over his body. He then joins Katie and Robbie.
I found this movie to be the creepiest of all that have been made so far, simply because of the ending where viewers get an up-close view of the demonic forces within Katie, Wyatt and Robbie, along with another very creepy twist at the end that leaves the viewer with even more questions for the fifth Paranormal Activity to answer.
However, this was also my first time to see a “Paranormal Activity” in theaters, so my opinion on the creepy factor might be skewed, considering my environment was so different than when I saw the first two, which was in a well-lit house on a comfy couch.
Nonetheless, upon seeing this movie with many other people for the first time at the midnight release, I found that it effectively served its purpose, bringing viewers together in rushes of adrenaline and gasps of shock.
It also had a very interesting plot, creating more character ties and more questions about the mystery.
For example, what happened to Kristi and Daniel’s child, Hunter, who Katie abducted? Is Wyatt actually Hunter, since he was adopted by the family in the movie and the demon called him Hunter?
Or is Robbie actually Hunter because he was with Katie in the beginning of the movie? Also, who exactly brought this curse upon Katie and Kristi’s family and how many others are a part of this demonic fleet?
Hopefully these questions and more will be answered in the fifth movie. I have enjoyed the series thus far, despite some aspects of the movies that have made me laugh at the sheer stupidity of them, like the whole character of Micah in the first movie.
I mean, are you really going to start playing with a Ouija board when your wife is scared to death of the demonic forces in the house? I honestly felt pretty justified when Katie killed him; that’s what he gets for being such a stupid character.
However, all the bad parts aside, the series has been entertaining so far, and the fourth “Paranormal Activity” gave interesting twists to the unfolding story of the series.
