Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension Is Just as Bad a Film as Its Predecessors

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension: “R” (88 min.)

Starring: Chris J. Murray, Brit Shaw, Ivy George, Dan Gill, Olivia Taylor Dudley

Directed by: Gregory Plotkin

Okay kids, let’s get this part out of the way right at the top. We are so totally not a fan of the “shaky cam” or “found footage” brand of film-making. We didn’t like it (and found it both annoying and distracting) when Blair Witch did it back in in 1999 and cast a pox on viewers for the past 17 years. This isn’t innovative, it is bad camera work masking sloppy storytelling (for the record, we didn’t like it when J.J. Abrams did it for Cloverfield, and we actually liked that film). No one in their right mind (unless there are a cameraperson specifically tasked with doing it) picks up a camera and then runs with it while looking through the lens. It is all but impossible to do, and the resulting imagery is like riding on a tilt-a-whirl while on a bender.

The fact that most of these “found footage” films tend to be horror films, only makes them worse. We have found the entire Paranormal Activity series of films to be mind-numbingly tedious, and lacking in any social redeeming, or esoteric value. They are the same story told over and over again, with essentially the exact same things occurring to the protagonists of the story. Why people keep coming out to pay to view these films is, well beyond us. Still, there seems to be a market for them, so, here goes.

In this outing we are following a new family who are about to discover that their lovely home is haunted by the evil spirits of those who lived there before. This family, the Fleeges, consisting of dad, Ryan (Murray), mom Emily (Shaw) and their young daughter Leila (George). After moving into their new place, the Fleeges find an old video camera as well as a box of tapes in the garage. When they look through the camera’s lens, they begin to see the unusual activity occurring (which we know right away is paranormal and should be avoided at all costs — why no one ever says “Wow, this is wicked bad stuff, I’m-a gonna burn the entire bundle in a roaring fire is again, baffling to us). Well, the more they watch they the tapes happening around them - including the re-emergence of young Kristi and Katie Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown and Chloe Csengery — from the previous films).

Needless to say, what we find more unbelievable than that the family continues to screw around with the camera and watch the tapes is that they even have a VHS machine on which to watch them. This film does, after all take place in 2015, not 1985. Still, passing all understanding, Ryan and his brother decide to watch the tapes, and soon see that they are tapes where Katie and Kristi are being schooled in supernatural abilities by their grandmother. The really spooky stuff starts to happen when Katie notices the brother’s presence on the monitor. This in spite of the fact that the video was made some 20 years prior. Soon Leila becomes the newest victim of supernatural attacks, and Ryan must find a way to save his daughter.

Sigh.

Again, nothing much new is revealed here in this film, just more of the same as we’ve already seen in this series, so why anyone would want to see it is something we don’t quite understand. Sure, sure we totally get why people like horror films, but this is a badly (and barely written), and eternally repetitive and extremely derivative film series that substitutes bad camerawork for actual cinematography and banality for content. Hopefully this will be the last one in the series.