Alright, I’m a sucker for Paranormal Activity movies. There’s something very Silent Hill meets Ghost Adventures about these now never-ending films that is equally scary as shit and extremely stupid and I fall for it every single goddamn time. Not just because I keep waiting for them to actually show Tobi with an i, not with a y, but because I genuinely get scared from found footage movies. I stopped holding drinks in my hand while watching this genre for the very reason that lots of good shirts have been doused with wine from jump scares.
And it’s not that I’m necessarily a believer of the supernatural; I’ve done the Bloody Mary thing in the mirror with my cousin once when we were kids and nothing happened. However, I never did it after I saw Candyman, because WHO WOULD DO THAT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
I digress.
So when I heard sometime over this past summer that a new one of these Paranormal Activities was churning out, I was interested. This past weekend, I watched it and have a lot of opinions about it so let’s rip right into it-
Maybe I missed the very beginning, but what is the set up of the supposed found footage? WHO FOUND IT SO THAT WE ARE NOW WATCHING IT? The entirety of Paranormal Activity being fucking scary is that everything is happening first person or we’re watching it happen to people with a camera set up in the room like a low budget porn shoot that we’re voyeuring (which is also equally scary).
Two main problems with this movie from the start is that while they were doing the hand held camera thing, there was also some mysterious other camera filming things happening to the people. So is this a regular filmed movie or found footage? Make up your fucking mind!!
The main plot is that a young woman, named Margot, who was deserted as a baby, did the whole 23&Me thing and found a “close relation” named Samuel (cousin? brother? uncle? Who the fuck is this guy?) and he wants to connect her back to her biological family. She, along with friend Chris, and a hired sound guy named Dale meet up with Samuel and he takes them on a long drive to East Jesus Nowhere Covered in Snow and we assume that this family is Amish based on their clothing and lack of general technology. Her biological grandfather, Jacob, although initially reluctant, invites them to stay.
For some reason, even though they’re probably Amish, they’re totally cool with a documentary style crew with cameras and boom mikes moving in a for a few days so that Margot can learn about them. They’re also one hundred percent ok with Margot sleeping in the same room as Chris and Dale for the stay and are unbothered by Outlanders invading their general space while they’re working. Margot finds out that her mother, Sarah, got pregnant by some local yocal and RUNNOFTS with her (as a newborn) to escape her lame farm life and to avoid giving up her baby for adoption…even though she immediately went and dropped her off at a hospital.
~Somehow during this time their car battery dies stranding them until apparently forever at the farm.~
Obviously, weird random things start occurring almost immediately:
- The Doc Crew sees a group of red lights (candles? warning lights?) going into the woods late at night, which is explained away by Samuel next morning as a raid party looking for bears who killed livestock. Huh. Totally plausible.
- They hear noises in the attic over their room, though the door to the attic is locked tight. Could be mice, but is probably Tobi, who is fond of late night vexing.
- They chat with some kids around the community and one little girl mentions that Sarah is “still there” even though she’s spoken of like she’s dead.
- While filming dinner being prepared one night, an old lady peeling potatoes starts casually peeling her own hand and the camera cuts away. This is never mentioned again in the entire movie.
Margot wakes up one night and turns the camera on to film the sounds coming from the attic. Getting up to investigate, because of course she does, she finds the door to the attic open, because of course it is, and decides to go on a self guided tour to investigate, Zak Bagans style. It’s your normally eerie attic bedroom with letters that Margot’s mom apparently wrote and left and no one ever cleaned up. She hears someone coming so instead of revealing herself, she hides under the bed and Jacob comes up and looks around, then heads back down and LOCKS THE FUCKING DOOR behind him, after probably wondering how and why it was open in the first place. While Margot is trying to figure out how the fuck she’s going to get out, a ghostly apparition appears behind her as seen in a window reflection to probably ask why the fuck she’s snooping and stealing letters in the middle of the night and then disappears as fast as my interest in this plot. Upon spinning around and seeing literally no one, she opens the window and apparently manages to get down the tin roof in the fucking snow in the middle of the night and get back to her bedroom unscathed. (None of this was filmed or mentioned again later)
The next morning, Chris is flying a drone around the property, which is also totally cool and not intrusive in any way with these probably Amish people and sees a murdery looking church back in the woods where the livestock killing bears live, so he and Margot decide to venture out to take a look at it. Without any guns or back up. The dark and ominous church set in a field in Northern East Jesus Nowhere Covered in Snow has a giant fucking bar across the giant fucking locked doors, yet they still try to get in. Luckily, Jacob sneaks up on them and tells them in a kindly Logan Roy way to fuck way off from the church and to never, ever, ever, EVER go in.
(Can’t wait for them to go in)
That night, Margot and Chris sneak out of the house which has no security or locks whatsoever to watch a baby two headed goat sacrifice in the barn. Samuel explains it the next morning that they can’t take care of a two headed goat, which makes sense, but also why did 10 people need to be there for it? Seems sus.
Obviously, the next day the two head back to the church because what’s more fun than breaking and entering?? They snoop around and Chris realizes that under the alter, there’s a giant blown out ass looking hole going down extremely too far into the ground. Margot decides she’s going down the (ass)hole because biologically she’s just as crazy and creepy as her kin and harnesses up to get slowly let down with her camera. It’s only when she gets all the fuck way to the bottom that she starts having second thoughts and hears some noise (probably a livestock killing bear) and gets hauled back up.
The next day, because this movie is never going to fucking end, Margot has almost run out of places to nose around, so she checks out Jacob’s room and finds a hidden closet with a fucking computer. With Wifi. In East Jesus Nowhere Covered in Snow. Since the security at this farm is atrocious, she is able to sign in immediately and find emails between Jacob and Samuel clueing her in that they’ve known about her for years and have been stalking her. That night, she wakes up to find their bedroom door open and before she goes to check it out, her roommates won’t wake up, even though she’s shaking them like an airline passenger who won’t get a hold of herself. After about 5 seconds of trying and failing to wake them, she goes it alone and gets snatched by an unseen entity in a very Katie / Micah way and then proceeds to get pulled up towards the ceiling where the camera cuts out.
Huh. So…were Chris and Dale drugged? Was it some sort of sleep spell? Were they just tired of this repetitive plotline and checked out? Who hasn’t pretended to be dead when their friend tries to wake them up for some bullshit?
Also who edited this?? How long was she on the ceiling? How did she get down?
The next morning, Margot gets what is described as a “bad menstrual cycle” by the local probably Amish doctor, which we’ve all had at some point, but somehow she manages to not only bleed all over the white sheets (goddamn those periods from hell), but on the fucking ceiling. No one finds this strange.
After bleeding out an entire livestock killed by bear’s worth, she finally fucking decides they need to leave so Chris and Dale venture to town to FINALLY GET A GODDAMN CAR BATTERY, but obviously leave Margot because what’s the worst that could happen? They hitch a ride with the neighborly postman who mentions casually that those people are definitely not Amish.
While at what I’m assuming is the local Dollar General to buy a car battery, because what else is out there, they borrow a computer and google creepy farms in probably Pennsylvania and come to the conclusion that they’ve got to be devil worshippers.
Oh, fuck, they left Margot there.
Maybe they should go back for her?
Somehow they get back to the farm and Dale begins to install the new battery. Chris goes to get Margot from the house and discovers (dramatic pause) she’s missing. Since she’s probably (obviously) in the dark and ominous church, he heads through a fucking blizzard that’s started randomly to go retrieve her and her explosive period. However, when he arrives at the D&O church, he discovers Jacob, who is guarding the (ass)hole, and has to fight him in order to descend into the crevasse.
Now it starts to get a little bananas.
Down in The Underground, Chris finds Margot seemingly unconscious laid out like mostly dead Snow White with an old lady muttering Amish demonic (?) phrases over her because they clearly intend to use her for some Satanic ritual, but couldn’t do it in the actual D&O church – they needed to go like 100ft under the damn thing. For plain people they sure do go to a lot of troubles. Also, how did they get her underground when she was unconscious? Is there a separate entrance? How did the old lady get down there?
Chris throws the old bitch away, cause obviously, but instead of fighting back she starts freaking out about salt. OHHHHH, ok, so now we’re trying to keep a demon contained (which I learned about back in the 90s from the good writers of BTVS). He wakes Margot, who is now fine and not pmsing in any way, and they take off, but not before some unearthly creature shrieks in the background. The camera pans and what appears to be a female Gollum is chained up in the corner of The Underground.
As Chris and Margot escape back to the (ass)hole opening, the creature is also trying to escape or hug them, at this point no one knows. Dale is now magically waiting up in the church and starts hauling their asses, one at a time, up the tight squeeze. They manage to make it back up and out into the frenzied snow in the middle of the night with no lights to guide their way, but somehow the female Gollum has managed to get out, too, and straight up murders Dale.
Bye, Dale! They leave him immediately decide to hide in the barn and the creature sneaks in behind them because for something that’s been underground for who knows how long, it can see through blinding snow in the middle of the night. After a quick chase around the barn there is a semi reveal that The Thing From The Underground is actually Margot’s mom, Sarah. Why is she a demon thing now? How did she get back to the farm from escaping into the real world? No questions are answered, but Margot manages to throw the mom creature down onto some spikey farm appliance that was obviously put there for this very reason and it dies after being impaled. I mean, I guess it dies. We don’t visit it anymore after that.
Chris and Margot keep it moving, even though Margot just murdered her bio mom after finding out she was some undead monster being kept hostage in a bunker who was trying to possess or hug her (we have no idea), and they have no real issues making it back to the truck, even though now all of the entire farm is on fire, people are walking around with no eyes, the livestock is all dead (GODDAMN BEARS!), and everything is essentially chaos. They get in the truck and realize they don’t have the keys; DALE DOES.
Womp, womp.
So…
Back out to the woods, make it back to Dead Dale successfully, grab the keys, back to the truck, etc.
Did they just need an extra 5minutes of film? What the fuck was the point of that?
Back to the truck (again) anddddd it doesn’t start. Of course. As the crazies start attacking the truck, it finally fucking cranks and they blast out of there and on to the road, as expected in a movie that cares so little about an actual fucking plot.
Some time later in the evening, the police eventually show up to the farm, though, I’m not sure how they were alerted. Did the neighbors call? Did Chris and Margot make it to the station? However, the police are immediately fucked; a shirtless (?), possessed Samuel entices them to shoot themselves and then he steals a police car and takes off down the road.
Wait? What? How did Samuel get possessed? What happened to his shirt? Why is he the only one still alive? I thought they wanted a woman? ALSO, HOW IS HE RELATED TO MARGOT?
Overall Grade: D+