Trailer Park 6: Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

While Trailer Park's changed a bit, click here for the basic rundown and a directory of past installments!

 

In the past week or so, Paramount Pictures released the trailer to the new Paranormal Activity spinoff film, The Marked Ones. And since it's that Halloween season again, I thought I would talk about it rather than, you know, talk about something amazing like The Twilight Zone or The Sixth Sense. Priorities.

Now I will establish this up front: I don't watch horror movies. I enjoy a good thriller, but I'm not a huge fan of gratuitous blood and jump scares. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed The Sixth Sense and The Birds, but I can't tell you the next time I'll watch either of them again. Anyway, jumping off the found footage style of The Blair Witch Project, Oren Peli created a low-budget, very entertaining (according to audiences) horror film. Since then, it's become a widespread thing and now we get a new one for next year...kind of.

The first time I watched this trailer, I didn't feel it. Second time I watched it, still wasn't scared. The trailer starts off in a Latino town, a party, and an old lady dies. And of course, our band of scallywags decide that they should break into her house, because that's the logical thing to do. I mean, it's like you knew her! Note the sarcasm. Anyway, they walk in, find out she was stalking him, and our main amigo wakes up the next morning with a strange mark on his arm. This is where I feel the movie's going to drag.

For the next thirty or forty minutes of the movie, I feel, are just going to be them researching the cause of the markings and finding nothing. None of that will be interesting, I guarantee. People came for a horror movie and be legitimately scared, but instead they see a man go super saiyan on a couple of gang members. That won't be scary at all, and it is likely used only as a special effects distraction from the real scares. What the first films succeeded in was their suspense and not knowing when or how something was going to happen. Director/writer Christopher Landon doesn't seem to understand, substituting suspense and shocking resolution for predictable scares and creepy imagery. Even the lady talking to Jesse (the main amigo)'s amiga knows how everything is going to pan out. Maybe if people stop filming every strange thing that happens to them, the poltergeist will leave-- just a thought. But I guess then Paranormal Activity 5 can't take place across Vine, so I guess we'll have to sit through it. All in all, I'm going to say this trailer FISHTAILED. Paranormal Activity 4 failed to entertain most fans, and I don't see this spinoff bringing them back for more.


So what say you? Are you going to see this when it comes to town in January? Or are you going to stick with some older favorites? Which Paranormal Activity is your favorite? Comment below, and let me know!