The Horror Show
Paranormal Activity:
The Marked Ones
Directed by Christopher Landon
Every time I hear about another Paranormal Activity movie coming out I shake my head slightly and sigh. I often wonder why they keep making these movies and then by the time they come out what am I doing? Watching them. I didn’t see Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones in the theater, but I definitely did sit through it because I’ve seen all of the others in the series and I knew what I could count on.
The Marked Ones begins like any other PA movie, a happy family doing whatever it is that happy families do. Celebrating a graduation in this case, the Mexican-American family of Jesse, our main character, is a fun family that makes for witty banter and great dialogue. I thoroughly enjoyed the comedic aspect that The Marked Ones brought to the table. I think that most people would have simply looked over the “familia” feeling this movie incorporated but I was entertained and reminded of my own childhood living with my grandmother and all the fun of an ethnic family environment.
When you really get into the meat and potatoes of the movie, we are introduced to Ana, the downstairs neighbor who seems to be into some sort of witchcraft, or brujeria. Jesse and his best friend Hector attempt to spy on their odd neighbor and find evidence that she is indeed messing around with something she shouldn’t. After a run in with a friend from school, Oscar, as he seems to be running for his life from Ana’s apartment, we find out that Ana has been murdered. All signs point to Oscar. Jesse and Hector decide to sneak into the now vacant apartment and have a look around, they find some very interesting trinkets and steal them, deciding they want to try and delve into the same stuff that Ana has been messing around with. With the help of their friend Marisol, they sneak into a church and attempt to open a doorway to another dimension and release the spirits into their world.
So this is when, as you would assume, and you’d be correct in assuming, that all hell breaks loose upon these teenagers. The oddities of the interactions with the spirit world are happening very slowly, and at first, you almost think the spirits are here to protect Jesse. There is an instance in a park where Jesse and Hector are attacked by some thugs and some unknown force throws the thugs around like ragdolls, it’s almost as if there is some sort of force field around Jesse, protecting him from harm. After the plot creeps along a little more, you will soon come to realize that these spirits are in fact not here to protect Jesse at all, and we learn that Jesse has been marked since birth for possession by a demon.
I’d have to say that in The Marked Ones, I found the plotline to be almost unnoticeably clever. As Jesse becomes more and more violent and his soul plunged deeper into darkness as the demon ever so slowly consumes him, you are distracted by the events of the movie just enough to miss the subtleties of the connection between every other Paranormal Activity movie that preceded this one. I mean, the connections are boldly right in your face, such as Ali from Paranormal Activity making a cameo appearance in the movie, helping our teens along in their search for answers. But I think my favorite part of the connection of this movie to the others was the incorporation of time travel.
Yes. Time travel. You see, The Marked ones takes place in the 2012/2013 time frame, whereas the previous installments in the series date back as far as 1988 when the children Katie and Kristi first meet the demonic entity called Toby. The only way the events of The Marked Ones can be explained is that somehow a gateway has indeed been opened up and Jesse is able to time travel. There are a few parts in the movie in which this will be right in your face, but you may almost miss it if you aren’t looking for it…but I’m not going to give the parts away, you’ll just have to go find out for yourself.
So overall, I guess the question I should be asking is not “Why do they keep making these movies” but rather “When is the next one coming out?” Is the Paranormal Activity franchise a great horror franchise? To this I answer, yes. Simply because you don’t go see Paranormal Activity to get an original scare or watch a found footage film that hasn’t been done before. This isn’t Oscar material, but you watch the movie to uncover the demonic mystery it has to offer. The stories are so intricately woven together that even in The Marked Ones, the plot thickens, and I have a strong feeling that there are still answers that are yet to come. Is it the best movie I’ve seen this year? Absolutely not, but I found it both entertaining and smart. The acting doesn’t kill it for me, and neither does the fact that it’s a found footage film. In fact, I think the Paranormal Activity franchise is the only found footage films I even bother watching anymore. I knew with The Marked Ones that I could count on a cheesy, over exaggerated horror film that would give me the creeps while making my mind work. The best part about it? It doesn’t try to be anything but fiction, and good fiction at that.
Stevie Kopas, Associate Editor HMS
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