Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)

Pretty Good

Crappy film

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A Latino spin-off from the inexplicably popular Paranormal Activiity found-footage series, The Marked Ones follows a group of friends, Jesse (Andrew Jacobs), Hector (Jorge Diaz) and Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh), who discover that strange occult rituals have been taking place in their apartment complex. Soon after, Jesse starts to act very strangely, and it gradually becomes apparent that he has been marked by a coven of witches who need him for one of their black magic shin-digs.Boring, predictable, unimaginative garbage with zero atmosphere and countless ineffective jump scares, the fifth Paranormal Activity film fails to bring anything new to the table, reeling off all the clichés that have become synonymous with the found-footage sub-genre. For about two seconds—when the witches ran screeching from the darkness only to be be blown away by shotgun—the film actually held my interest, but for the rest of the time I was clock watching, longing for the closing credits.After what seemed like an eternity of characters wandering round in the dark, the end credits did indeed come, but only after the final surviving character went through a time-portal to come face to face with Micah and Katie from the first film. Why? How? What? I'm confused, but I really can't be bothered to invest the time trying to figure it out.

I didn't know it, but I watched the last two out of order. I thought Ghost Dimension came after PA4 until I stumbled upon this title. It really didn't make a difference though. This part was no essential link to Ghost Dimension. This title really could have stood on its own. In any case, everything after part 3 was remedial. They tried different things to breathe life into it but I'm still looking at a dead franchise.In this one the setting is Los Angeles. My guess is East L.A. They go a little further with explaining the weird happenings but still falling short of fully telling the audience what's it all about. Like PA4 though, there is no real reason to be parading around with a video camera. I've done this rant before and I will reiterate it for this review. Sometimes it makes sense to video things, other times it doesn't. I don't think I'm in the minority when I say that when your life is on the line, videoing is probably one of the last things you'd be concerned about. In fact, for most of your life in general you'd probably eschew videotaping--if not because of your own customs and beliefs, at least out of respect for others. As for me--don't come around me videoing everything. Hence, one of my problems with PA:TMO. There was no real, logical or socially acceptable reason to be videoing a lot of what went on. The first three parts were clever and made sense out of having a lot of video footage, PA4 and now PA:TMO have both been weak. Weak with the story, weak with the POV found footage and weak with the regurgitated sequence of events. This is number five, I know they made a number six and in my opinion they made three too many.

Literally and metaphorically speaking. Though some might feel it never actually had a real up. But whatever you think of the Paranormal movies, they made their money. It's like that with every successful movie series. There are fans of it and those people who don't like the movies at all, which doesn't take anything away from what those movies achieved (something the Witch from Blair wasn't able to start, even despite all the financial success).So this spin-off or whatever you want to call it, plays in a different country, but has the same clichés and the same annoying behavior from the characters who are playing lead here. If you don't mind, there are moments of tension that are kind of genuine. Other than that you sometimes wonder what takes evil so long to finally get it going on ...

When I watched this movie over Thanksgiving day break from school, I didn't particularly care for the whole story-line of the entire movie. And to be precise, I don't really particularly care for the whole story-line of the entire "Paranormal Activity" movie series.During this movie, I noticed a few minor and major stupid decisions. Like for one, why would someone want to go into someone else's apartment after their death? I mean, seriously? That's just a sign of disrespect in my eyes on their part.When Jesse's friends (Hector and Marisol) go to the source of this demonic mayhem and try to unravel the truth of their friend, Jesse, they bring Arturo and his "gang member," Santo as protection while they investigate the house looking for their friend.