Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

Starring Chris Murray, Brit Shaw, Dan Gill, Ivy George

Directed by Gregory Plotkin

The Story:
Ryan (Chris Murray), his wife Emily (Brit Shaw) and young daughter Leila (Ivy George) have just moved into a huge, expansive house.  His brother Mike (Dan Gill) and Emily's sister Skyler (Olivia Taylor Dudley) come to visit for the holidays, and Mike finds an old camera in a box, along with some VHS tapes.

Ryan and Mike soon find out the camera has been rigged to be able to see what happens in the ghost dimension, and soon they begin to see a demon haunting the house - and Leila in particular.  She becomes distant and strange, and as they look through the old VHS tapes, they discover the house they're living in was the house built on the ground of a burned down house that Katie and Kristi, two girls raised in a cult, had lived in previously. 

They learn the demon, named Toby, wants Leila and it was foretold decades before she was even born, and she would bring Toby from the spirit world to the real world.  They enlist the help of a priest in hopes of stopping the demon and ending Toby's reign of terror forever.

The Synopsis:
Horror movies are well known for making sequels, and there's two schools of thought to said sequels.  Either they try to do something totally different than the original (such as "The Book of Shadows," the sequel to "The Blair Witch Project" and the big difference between "Saw III" and the remaining films in the franchise), or they tweak one or two things but keep the general theme (such as the "Friday the 13th" series, which follows the same formula - Jason lives, kills teenagers, gets killed himself, returns to life; chew, swallow, repeat).  With the "Paranormal Activity" series, they tend to take the latter theme and only change one or two things, but keep the original idea intact.

There was the first film, which was your typical scary ghost story.  Then the sequel, which followed the exact same formula.  The third film was a prequel in the 80s but also centered on the same aspect.  The fourth featured a new family, but the same concept, and the fifth was a spinoff centering around a deeply religious Hispanic family.  With "The Ghost Dimension," they tweaked the story a little by having it in 3D, as well as being able to "see" the paranormal events thanks to the special camera.

The "Paranormal Activity" story puttered after the first film, because it was the same ole same every sequel.  First-person camera, lots of nothing happening, a few things begin to happen, then it all hits the fan in the last ten minutes.  If you were seeing these at the theaters, you could sneak out, grab a snack, use the bathroom, talk to some old friends, write the next great American novel, and re-enter the theater to see the last ten minutes and you didn't miss a thing.  If you were smart and didn't waste your money in the theater and saw it at home, you could simply fast-forward through the entire movie until the ending.  Or you could bore yourself to tears and watch everything, and either way you still wouldn't understand what happened. 

That's because "Paranormal Activity" was supposed to be a one-and-done film, but as it is with Hollywood, when a film makes a ton of money, they start spewing out sequels like newspaper editions.  With each new "Paranormal Activity," the mythos changes, becomes more convoluted and irrational, where now it's just a shell of what it once was.  You need a Master's degree to even begin to understand the six films as a whole, and you really shouldn't be that intelligent to get a horror franchise. 

Back to the story here.  As I said earlier, what marks "The Ghost Dimension" different than the others is that it was shot in 3D, and you were finally able to see the activity.  Both are lame gimmicks that the producers used to try to re-vitalize the long-dead franchise, and failed miserably on both ends.  What made the first film great (although, personally, I didn't find it at all scary or interesting) was that it was something new and fresh.  If you repeat that cycle five more times, it's not so new and fresh anymore, and the cheap scares and lame jump scenes become more a joke than terrifying.

With the 3D aspect, as it is with any horror film that uses this gimmick, it simply becomes a new means to give you a cheap jump scare as a ghost hand flies out at you, or someone gets surprisingly tossed at or tossed from the lens.  Granted, I didn't waste my money to see this in 3D, but even seeing it in 2D I could tell they were trying to do this.  With being able to see the activity, there's such a thing as "too much is not a good thing."  What made the previous films passable was not being able to see the evil tormenting the actors.  With this film, we see everything, and it takes away from the fear of the unknown.  If there was any fear left over in this one-horse franchise.

So we have a re-tread idea, lame acting, obvious ending, and the fascination as to how they managed to make so many sequels of the same exact thing, and why people kept coming back for more.  Granted, each installment drew in less and less people, but they still had eyes on the screen.  I wonder what it was like to see this in theaters, if people were simply so zoned out they weren't paying attention, or if they caught a cat nap, or had a laptop as they wrote the next American novel.  They surely weren't sitting interested in what was happening, because, as the franchise is known for, nothing at all happens.

The Summary:
Just like that last guy at the party you just wish would leave, "The Ghost Dimension" serves as that unwanted guest, the ending of a franchise that long outstayed its welcome after the first film ended. 

The Score: C+