If you're tardy to the party, here are my previous rants, in order:
I didn't start with part one or two, because this blog was after their time, but I always go back and reference them. I may do an entire review of the series after this weekend, but for now I digress.
Anyway, now that you're all caught up.
If you were hip to the jive enough to stay passed the credits of the uber-mediocre Paranormal Activity 4, you were taken to a brief clip in what appeared to be a store of some sort. The windows were covered with newspapers and there was some yelling in Spanish into a blackout, leaving you to wonder what the hell that was all about -- much like the movie you'd just paid $12 to sit and watch.
So it's no real surprise that the newest installment in this series of mindfucks sort of picks up where that leaves off. The film centers around a kid named Jesse. The first born son in his family. He's accompanied most of the time by his two best friends Hector and whatever the chick's name is. I'm too lazy to look it up right now because I'm good at reviews. Jesse had been hearing noises coming from the neighbor's house. They put a camera through the vent to see that the neighbor is painting a symbol on the stomach of a naked woman in her living room. One of Jesse's classmates is seen leaving the neighbor's house the next day and the neighbor ends up dead shortly thereafter. As does the classmate, as he emerges from the basement of the neighbor's apartment when Jesse and Hector are trying to get laid by sneaking two girls over there. Good jump scares.
Jesse is then "marked". Or bitten. He's able to communicate with the entity by way of a Simon game, which I really liked. He has powers that he takes the time to explore. Then he turns and gets angry and can't control it.
They find Ali - of Paranormal Activity 2 - and she explains the cult and how it works. How they're trying to take the first born son. Where she gets ALL of this information I'm not sure. What the fuck ever happened to Martine (the housekeeper who got fired, brought back and then disappeared into thin air in PA2, ya idiot)? That's what I wanna know.
I'm feeling the need to stop recapping and just start wondering out loud. There is so much I have to question in this film. Jesse & co start breaking into the neighbor's house repeatedly and steal a notebook they found on the floor. In the notebook has all writings and drawings and rules of the cult we've seen in previous films. There was mention of a door. When the door is built, one can travel to "unholy" places. Turns out, the unholy places can be in ANY time. When in the basement because he heard his dog crying next door, Jesse sees young Katie and young Kristi and their grandmother as well. And the biggest move is the twist ending. And I'm going to ruin the fuck out of it for you right now.
Jesse is, at this point, uncontrollable. He's got the demon inside him and he's thrown his grandmother down a flight of stairs and is just downright haunted. So Hector and - fuck it I'll look up her name - Marisol decide to go to the house where this cult meets. Because Marisol knocks Jesse's ass out with a baseball bat. Then the car they're all in gets hit by a truck and whoever was in the truck STEALS Jesse and leaves.
So blah blah blah Marisol ends up dead. Another good jump scare. So Hector, who has been our camera operator through the entire endeavor, is the only one left in the house. There's an altar with all kinds of pentagramy fun all over the place. The unicorns. The symbols. It's all there. Jesse keeps finding Hector and Hector keeps narrowly escaping. In one instance, you're certain Hector is done for. The camera goes fuzzy, as if it were a VHS tape with tracking and audio problems. (Here's the wikipedia page for VHS tapes, in case you're a fetus)
When you're brought back into focus, there's a door in the POV. POV stands for point of view, idiot.
The door is slightly different than the others and there's carvings on it. One of which being the mark of this cult.
When Hector walks through this door, you're immediately in a familiar living room. That rug. The counter top. The living room. The bead table. You're in fucking Katie and Micah's house. When the camera points to the stairs, you see Katie lifelessly walking down them, in her white wifebeater and boxer shorts. Hector is begging for her help, but she pays no mind. She goes to the kitchen and gets a knife. He touches her shoulder. She turns around. Hector backs away. Katie begins to scream. Katie is screaming the scream at the end of the very first Paranormal Activity. Soon Micah is downstairs and Katie stabs him to death and the Jesse demon presumably kills Hector. Katie turns off the camera after it falls.
There is time travel involved now, folks. I didn't realize it at first, but when I got home I remembered that the time stamp at the beginning of The Marked Ones was 2012. Katie and Micah's story from 2006. I don't know what else to say. I'm confused and the story is getting a little convoluted, but I think we still may be on track to a great end to this series. And if this IS the end of the series, I'm going to be sort of pissed off. I still want to see the house fire. I want to see the second round of hauntings of Katie and Kristi as children. I want to see an entire film of the things you couldn't see in the dark in the first couple films.
As always with this franchise, the movie left me with more questions than answers, but it was far, far superior to the fourth installment. A lot of really good scares, a lot of good laughs and definitely worth your time, if you're into these movies.
Four stars on this bad boy. Out of five. Four stars out of five stars. Where am I?
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