MOVIE REVIEW: Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

Horror

Directed By: Gregory Plotkin

When the first Paranormal Activity movie was released into theaters eight years ago it took the world by storm. Becoming an instant sensation the film grossed over $100 million dollars on a measly $15,000 budget making it one of the most profitable films of all time. With a clever marketing campaign and an original idea they created one of the most successful modern horror franchises. Now, eight years and five movies later we are finally getting the "conclusion" to that story and it's the least intriguing of the bunch. In the sixth installment of the franchise they ditch the mystery and slow burn that made the other films work so well and instead focus on crappy CG ghosts and a story that feels like it was put together in a single afternoon. 

The film opens on an admittedly creepy death scene, although no context is given and it isn't until halfway through the film that you really get a small understanding of what you had watched. From there it immediately cuts to present day and a new family that has just found an odd camera amongst their belongings. Assuming it belonged to the previous homeowners they shrug it off and begin using the camera to film random family events. That's when Ryan (Chris J. Murray) discovers that the camera can pick up things that we cannot see with our naked eye. From there it doesn't take long for them to realize what these things are when their daughter begins talking to "invisible friends". This is when they realize that something sinister is following their daughter and that something has plans for this little girl. 

Ghost Dimension doesn't do too much to separate itself from the other films beside add a camera that is completely fictional to their story. What once was a franchise that used creativity in their camera work, finding ways to use all of the crazy little camera's that exist in our everyday devices, has now fallen back on cheap tricks to create the illusion that ghosts are among these people. I was fine with this at first, the camera allows them to do some cool things and grab a couple easy scares but it loses all of its credibility when we start seeing CG ghosts. 

This franchise built itself on being a simple "found-footage" franchise that grabbed it scares not by actually showing you what lurks in the shadows, but by showing what those things do to the people they follow. In what is meant to be the conclusion to the franchise they ditch this idea completely to give us a movie full of computer animated ghosts that don't manage to be even half as scary as not seeing them at all. We get no moments that even come close to the mom being pulled into the basement in the second film or the final moments of the first, instead we get a few cheap jump scares and a story that still manages to answer about zero of the real questions the fans had about the story. 

As someone who has seen all of these films in theaters and that has thoroughly enjoyed all of them (yes, even the fourth one) I was hoping for a little more from this final movie. I know the films were never built on story and they were simply made to scare you but this movie feels like it never even tried. Aside from the handful of jump scares this film does nothing to get under your skin like the previous ones before it. I remember leaving the theater after all of the other movies, even the lesser ones, and feeling uncomfortable. Even without believing in any of the paranormal seeing these movies always made me second guess as I left the theater. When I walked out of the movies yesterday I was doing nothing but laugh about what I had just seen with my friend. If you were hoping for a satisfactory conclusion to a great modern horror franchise you will unfortunately be disappointed. With the money these movies make though, I doubt that this will actually be the final film under the "Paranormal Activity" banner. 

As always, thanks for reading and I am Zach Who Watches Movies. You can find me anytime on twitter @ZachWWMovies, smell ya later!