Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

Though billed as the final installment in the Paranormal Activity franchise, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension ultimately adds very little to the series as a whole and provides few of the answers viewers have been clamoring for – with the most obvious example of this the film’s total lack of closure for Katie Featherston’s recurring character. (The actress doesn’t even appear in the movie, despite popping up in each of the preceding installments.) The narrative, perhaps predictably, follows a bland and one-dimensional family as they move into a new house and are almost immediately bombarded by supernatural happenings, with the characters eventually able to see their doom approaching after the discovery of a special camera that allows them to watch the spirits at work. There’s little doubt that Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension fares best in its first half, as director Gregory Plotkin has infused certain sequences with a tension that proves effective at cultivating an atmosphere of palpable suspense. It’s a shame, then, that the movie begins to fizzle out demonstrably as it passes the midway point, with the expectedly deliberate pace growing more and more difficult to overlook as time progresses – especially given that this installment is meant to conclude the entire series (ie just when things should be ramping up, Plotkin begins taking a more measured approach). The anti-climactic finale, coupled with a thoroughly disappointing non-ending, confirms Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension‘s place as a serious disappointment, and if this indeed the end of the line for the Paranormal Activity saga, it’s ultimately difficult to recall a franchise that so completely failed to stick the landing.

** out of ****