Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)

(On DVD, March 2017) I’m as surprised as anyone else by the fact that I still like the Paranormal Activity series even at its fifth instalment, long after nearly everyone else has given up on it. The Marked Ones, to be fair, consciously sets out to do something different with the premise: Largely set within the Los Angeles Latino community, it features two characters held at arms-length from the events of the first four movies, and plays with the mythology in entertaining ways that nonetheless destroy any hope that it will all hang together in the end. But never mind: The Marked Ones is far more interesting when it spends time with its teenage protagonist, balancing joy and horror as his life is thrown upside down. Far more YouTubeish than the previous entries in the series, The Marked Ones nonetheless manages to be relatively fun, especially as a fifth entry in the series. The cultural context makes it more interesting than others (at least to me, given that I’m not exposed to the Californian Latino culture very much) and while the answers of the series aren’t coming, at least there are a few good set-pieces along the way.