The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

The high-grossing Paranormal Activity franchise brings us its latest addition, Paranormal Activity 4. Under the shameless co-direction of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, this fourth chapter into the paranormal ‘phenomenon’, which for some unknown reason continues to make big bucks after each instalment, is nothing but tired, static and pointless.

Paranormal Activity 4 picks up the dangling plot line from the PA 2 where a poltergeist-inundated Katie (Featherston) mysteriously vanishes together with her baby nephew Hunter. Set in Nevada’s suburbs, five years after the peculiar event, PA 4 follows the story of a pretty blonde teen, Alex (Newton), and her little brother Wyatt (Lovekamp) – whose family foolishly takes in the creepy kid from next door Robbie (Allen), after his mother, unseen for now,  mysteriously falls ill and gets taken to hospital.

Soon, strange and unexplained events start occurring. At first, it’s the little stuff: strange sounds in the middle of the night, Robbie’s constant muttering to and about his invisible buddy and kitchen knives mysteriously disappearing from countertops. Then the bigger stuff comes along with swinging chandeliers.

The force, for some reason, seems eager to win over Wyatt and eliminate Alex from the picture.  In order to get to the bottom of things, Alex and her nerdy boyfriend Ben (Shively) decide to set up a set of laptops around the house; that way they can spy on the weird lodger Robbie and record any bizarre activities.

Paranormal Activity 4 is a complete drag from start to finish.  The build-up is devastatingly slow, a lot of nothingness fills in the first hour of the film. The laughable dialogue and the overuse of ‘jumpy’ scenes seem to be the only ingredient for the ‘horror factor’ in this sequel. 

The plot, if you can call it that, doesn’t make sense and creates a genuine worry whether a true ‘supernatural world’ can ever be created by the PA factory.  The night-vision shots came off as rather disturbing since a lot of squinting is required to actually make out any sort of movement or object.

Paranormal Activity 4 leaves a long list of unanswered questions.  Such as, why has nobody bothered to review the recorded footage?  Why do they still keep filming when it’s obvious they should make a run for it? And so on. 

Overall, Paranormal Activity 4 is another lame attempt at entertainment. One can only hope that the series finally moves in a new direction with the next instalment – which will with no doubt come out to haunt us next year.