In 2007, Paranormal Activity breathed new life into the found footage horror film. Like The Blair Witch Project before it, the film forced its audience to use their imagination, bringing fear to what one could not see. This continued through the series, objects would move, people would get thrown around a room, but we were never actually shown what was doing this, and that is what kept the series entertaining. Eventually, night-to-night formula got a little stale, so the producer took a risk with the fifth installment, The Marked Ones. Surprisingly refreshing, the film focused on a Hispanic family, and experimented quite a bit with comedy and drama. Almost two years since The Marked Ones, and the PA team presents us with the “final” installment, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension.

With The Ghost Dimension, director Gregory Plotkin and team essentially ruin everything this franchise ever had going for it. Somebody – maybe one of the film’s four writers, yes it took four people to write this piece of shit – thought it was a good idea to show what was causing this “activity.” Well folks we finally find out that it was actually just a bunch of black semen-like fluid that was creeping us out for the past eight years. Yes, it is just gallons of goo floating in the air and throwing stuff.

Just when you think things cannot get any worse, they do, of course. Is it possible that writers Jason Pagan, Andrew Deutschman, Adam Robitel, and Gavin Heffernan – FOUR PEOPLE WROTE THIS – never saw the last five films? I ask this because The Ghost Dimension repeats many of the scares and set-ups of the previous films, making it not only unoriginal, but also not scary.

There was a moment in this film that showed promise. For a brief minute it seemed that we were going to get a reimagining of Being John Malkovich, as a little girl enters the Malkovich portal in her wall, but we are ultimately let down.

The Paranormal Activity franchise was a mess. It had its highs (The first film and The Marked One) and its lows (everything else), and with the final film being a complete train wreck, I think we are all ready for the activity to die.

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