Directed By William Eubank

Starring – Emily Bader, Roland Buck III, Dan Lippert

The Plot – A documentary filmmaker follows Margot (Bader) as she heads to a secluded Amish community, in the hopes of meeting and learning about her long-lost mother and extended family. Following a string of strange occurrences and discoveries, she soon realizes this community that welcomed them into their home might be hiding something sinister…

Rated R for adult language, violence, and bloody images throughout

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin | Official Trailer | Paramount+ – YouTube

POSITIVES

– Enhanced photography. Thankfully, Eubank and producers have thought better against the outdated scheme of found footage movies, which are often doomed by a complete lack of logic during the moments they conveniently leave the camera on. Found footage still persists here, however it’s supplemented with still frame photography and drone footage that better fills in the gaps of those momentary lapses between writer creativity and audience logic. The adverse reaction to this concept is that this installment of the Paranormal Activity franchise doesn’t feel as raw and untouched of its previous efforts, but it does offer a presentation that actually garners with it some substantially atmospheric cinematography from Pedro Luque (Don’t Breathe) that does enhance the isolation factor of the environment. “Next of Kin” might not be the best or most creative of the franchise’s sequels, but it does conjure up the most visually stimulating of the entire franchise, earning with it more production value in a streaming service than seven movies made for the big screen.

– Solid leads. Strangely enough, this eighth installment in the franchise brings with it the most endearing quality of performances that showcases some heavy lifting in emotional frailty. Most notably for the depiction is Emily Bader as Margot, whose curiosity is traded in midway through the movie for a gripping vulnerability that echoes the terror and trauma of the unknown, with respect to devil worshipers. Her scream echoes the sound design of the movie intricately, proving that if nothing else, they certainly got the lead of this movie correct on all fronts. Dan Lippert is also a commendable edition to the fray, serving as the comic relief for the film, whom actually did bring me a few intentional laughs from time to time, as a result of dry delivery that often requires a second take after hearing his shameless delivery. He’s the closest I felt to feeling immersed in the similarities of the ensemble, and occasionally makes me wish the movie just featured him, as he’s the only one who is remotely thinking logically. More on that later.

NEGATIVES

– Lukewarm horror. When the movie isn’t plaguing you with its abundance of predictably timed jump scares, it’s supplying the experience with dryly undercooked material that didn’t create any semblance of tension, let alone scares for my initial interpretation. Nothing here ever even remotely recreates the wheel, nor establishes anything compelling with respect to even the ground merits of horror, to which it completely absolves itself from. Characters in the movie will often tell us when something is scary, but that doesn’t mean it translates accordingly to those of us watching at home. So this is what you’re left with; people inside of the movie trying to coax you into having an unrelenting time, and it just served as a constant bore in summarizing the previously released greatest hits of a franchise with more detractors than admirers.

– Obvious exposition. On a surface level, I was at least slightly interested in the surface level plot of the movie, but it’s tragically wasted in a series of information dumps that often outline the bigger picture. This not only leads to inescapable predictability in the movie, in which I was often waiting for the movie to catch up to what I already capably interpreted, but it also made me groan with annoyance, as the characters are often candidly spoon-feeding you the information that will eventually come into play somewhere down the line. This is called obvious foreshadowing, boys and girls, and it often pertains to silly lines of dialogue that human protagonists wouldn’t actually say in the context of a conversation, but do so because it outlines a path of direction for this idea of a screenplay. It made “Next of Kin” feel like a movie I have seen long before I ever actually watched it, and proves that little to no effort was put in making this rebirth for the franchise anything endearing in the new wave of its lifespan.

– Mindless idiots. The morons in this movie make the kids in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” look like ideal citizens by comparison. I say that because for a trio of documentary filmmakers, whom the movie establishes early on for having a technological niche with high concept machinery, it completely removes any ounce of empathy from their situation, as a result of sheer stupidity for the choices they make. Believe me when I say I’ve watched a lot of horror movies in my day. Also believe me when I say that these are the single dumbest characters that I have ever seen in any of them, who often put their lives on the line for the sake of a shot, or because it furthers the plot, you decide. It points to a problem that producers still haven’t fixed about this franchise, in that stupid people don’t create concern for the audience watching beyond, leaving them and us feeling like the evolution in man regressed a step or two, and now lays dormant in the age of neanderthals.

– Stretched material. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say this movie bored me to tears with a 97 minute presentation that only deserved half of that. Touching on the main problem are a series of red-herring sequences, in which the sound will lower, and the shot will linger, in order to fool the audience into a fall sense of security with the aforementioned timely jump scares. The problem with it in this context, is that it prolongs sequences unnecessarily in ways that test and often alienate audience investment, making me yearn for a fast-forward button which I knew I couldn’t use even when I wanted so desperately to. The first two acts of this movie are like watching paint dry, asking us to wait patiently as the plot and conflict materialize at the speed of jelly, before settling into a third act that is the polar opposite of everything mentioned with the first two acts. So if you watch this film, I recommend watching the first ten minutes for structure, before speeding ahead to the final twenty minutes. It will certainly produce a cut of the movie that was better than the one I sat through.

– Lost essence. Establishing a reboot is a tricky science made all the more incoherent when you consider that very little about this eighth installment feels familiar. For starters, the words “Paranormal Activity” are about as condemning for this film as “Halloween” was in “Halloween III: Season of the Witch”. Just like that film, if this one was simply called “Next of Kin” or something else not pertaining to the Paranormal Activity franchise, then I feel like it would’ve had a greater chance at success. As it stands, it’s a shameless cash grab that features very little paranormal throughout, and a stylistic familiarity that looks like it was ripped directly from “The Witch” or any A24 horror movie. At its core, this might be the shell of Paranormal Activity, but it lacks the soul, which pertained to a rawness and ingenuity that appealed in taking something small, and making it feel universal with regards to its stakes and minimalist budget that it made go a long way.

– Painful editing. Although much improved from “The Marked Ones”, which I deemed as the single worst edited movie that year, “Next of Kin” still proves this franchise has a long way to go before prescribing coherence to the found footage genre. Depiction is angering to the point that it’s not only difficult to distinguish who in the crew is holding the camera at any given moment, but also what it is that they’re shooting. Considering these are members of a documentary crew, it’s difficult to believe that any of them can shoot anything ambitious or remotely compelling for audience delight, obscuring reality in a way that only succeeds at attaining motion sickness for the engagement. Finally, the scenes themselves are cut and pasted with an inconsistency that makes it feel like as many as three different editors worked on them at any given time, with some scenes running too long, and others running too short. It’s the biggest contributor to this movie attaining the 97 minute run time it reaches so shamefully for, and further makes so much of the experience worse with the obviousness of its jarring nature.

– Lasting image. As if I needed one more nut punch to my groin. After the smoke clears during a climax that I felt remotely satisfied with, writer Christopher Landon tried his hardest to completely suck out the air of momentum from my experience, and succeed he did with one of the weakest endings to a film from this year. Maybe it’s to intentionally leave matters open-ended to produce more installments to this dead horse of a franchise, but this feels like the only film from the series with an inescapably unfinished emphasis to what we’re left with. It’s made all the more frustrating with a prolonged still-frame shot that you just know will lead to a credits roll during the most inappropriate moment, and sure enough that’s the reality when you inevitably yell “That’s it?”, before you shut it off. It’s an ending that never really ended, and supplants everything about this movie that was mostly a gigantic waste of time and creative energy.

My Grade: 3/10 or F