Movie Q&A: Paranormal Activity 4
Paranormal Activity 4 is out today, which means only one thing: It’s been a year since the last film about idiots getting dragged around their house while filming it has been released. Did you miss it?
To commemorate the occasion, I’m answering some of the most silently wondered about questions that viewers had about the movie and putting them below for everyone to see. Yes, it’s time for another edition of Movie Q&A. Did you miss me?
Q: Paranormal Activity 4? I didn’t even know that was a thing.
A: Every year in October a new Paranormal Activity movie is released, so yes, apparently it is a thing.
Q: Is this still one of those movies with shaky cameras that should in no way be rolling when they are because who the hell would film this crap?
A: Yes, it’s still that, but this time the cameras are steady because they’re all laptops left around the house.
Q: Why is everything being filmed in this movie?
A: I’d love to answer this question, but it’s a mystery. Even though the main character in the film is recording everything, never once does she sit down to watch the footage and see that there’s paranormal activity (see what I did there?) going on in her house.
Q: Are you sure this movie is a thing?
A: Yes. Maybe you didn’t know it was a thing because the marketing probably referred to it as Par4no4mal Ac4ivit4. Also known as “Parfournofourmal Acfourivitfour.
Q: How is this movie different from the previous three?
A: This time there’s more creative camera angles and the main set piece involves an Xbox Kinect.
Q: What do you mean the main set piece involves an Xbox Kinect?
A: According to this movie, the Kinect projects infrared tracking dots all over the room that it’s in and these dots can be seen with a night vision camera. In the movie, the camera catches ghosts and demons walking through these dots, which is all well and good until you realize that someone hasn’t turned off the Kinect in well over a month and that’s gonna cause an overheating problem, eventually leading to a malfunction, which is almost scarier than the ghosts to begin with ‘cause that’s expensive to fix.
Q: Was the story in this movie any good?
A: The story of Paranormal Activity 4 starts with a kid from next door living in the main family’s house when scary stuff starts happening. Eventually, this kid is entirely forgot about and isn’t even in the movie anymore for some reason.
Q: What was the most arbitrary thing in this movie?
A: At one point the main character fell asleep for 2 straight days because her mother decided to give her sleeping pills. That was literally never explained or mentioned again.
Q: What was the second most arbitrary thing in this movie?
A: The mother is in the kitchen cutting vegetables with a knife, she turns around, and the knife flies up to the ceiling where she can never find it again. A few days later the knife comes crashing down, lands in the marble counter, and the father sees it. When he tries to tell the wife, she just tells him to come to bed and refuses to hear what happened. Apparently the father doesn’t think it’s weird, and the mother is a total fucking idiot.
Q: How could the family have better dealt with the invisible ghost-demons in this movie?
A: TURN ON THE LIGHTS. THAT SIMPLE.
Q: What if the lights were all burnt out? What’s another way the family could have better dealt with the invisible ghost-demons in this movie?
A: LEAVE.
Q: Was this film at all similar to the other three?
A: Yes. In every single Paranormal Activity movie every character ends up being dragged around by invisible beings. Every. Single. Time.
Q: Was this movie scary?
A: It was scary how little sense it made, and I suppose if you’re scared by loud noises and people appearing behind other people then yes, it’s scary.
Q: Was there anything at all good about this movie?
A: There were some cool shots and creative ways of changing up the formula from the other movies, so it wasn’t a complete disaster.
Q: If you had to market this movie, what would you say to get people to see it?
A: “The best movie about people being dragged around that was made in under a year since the last one!”
Q: Should I see this movie?
A: If you like these kind of things, then sure, the newest Paranormal Activity movie changed up its formula enough from the last one to warrant a viewing, but if you couldn’t care less about these movies, then skip it. Meanwhile, if you’re as big a fan of scenes involving sleeping pills that are never once mentioned again and shouldn’t have been in the movie in the first place because they weren’t relevant to the plot or even remotely explained in any way whatsoever as I am, then yes, this is the best movie in history to feature scenes like that. Bravo Paranormal Activity 4. Bravo.