Ghosts continue to be a problem in Paranormal Activity 4. The latest film in the annual Halloween series continues the irrelevant story of an invisible demon taking possession of spooky children by slowly opening doors at night. This time the unlucky haunted are a Nevada teenager and her family who have some seriously weird neighbours. Not that any of that matters. The joy of the Paranormal Activity films is in the breathless waiting for spooky goings-on that accompany every static frame. Here, modern tech like iChat windows and a hallucinogenic Xbox Kinect obscure the screen and allow ghostly horrors to hide in plain sight. The mythology is getting increasingly distracting, not to mention silly, but PA4 still has plenty of craft. The horror genre has taught us to anticipate the worst, and this film is happy to oblige.
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2012.