The boys attach the camera to a wire, lower it through the grate, and, to their amazement, observe frumpy Anna, in the nude, painting a red circle on the stomach of a gorgeous naked woman. Weird moaning sounds and bumps come up through the grate at night. Soon, the boys become curious about Anna (Gloria Sandoval), a downstairs neighbor. Their energy together feels unselfconscious it doesn't feel like acting. The only reason this banal footage has any entertainment value is because of the two actors. They do shots of tequila with Jesse's feisty grandmother (Renee Victor). Hector draws a penis on Jesse's face while he sleeps. At first, they just film each other doing dumb stunts involving laundry baskets and staircases. The only thing they have any interest in is fooling around with their new video camera. Both have just graduated from high school and seem to have no plans, no jobs, no goals. Jesse (Jacobs) and Hector (Diaz) live in a crowded apartment complex, with multigenerational family members crowded into small rooms. The efforts of Hector and Jesse’s sister, Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh), to banish the demonic presence that’s tormenting and transforming their loved one ultimately entangles them in the poorly spun yarn that constitutes Paranormal Activity’s sorry excuse for a mythology.Evil spirits are up to their old tricks in "The Marked Ones", and this time the action takes place in Oxnard, California, in a working-class Latino neighborhood, a welcome change in style and feel from the other more generic suburban installments. Nothing screams “the cupboard is bare” in terms of inspiration more desperately than hearing the supposedly creepy electronic beeps of a possessed Milton Bradley electronic Simon game that’s laughably become a makeshift Ouija board. That said, The Marked Ones is considerably stronger when lifting from proven commodities than it is when trafficking in its own half-baked ideas. In short order, it becomes readily apparent that any time the boys’ inquisitive camera pans right to find nothing, it’ll drift back to the left to discover some supernatural nastiness lying in wait.Īfter waking with an odd bite mark on his arm, Jesse starts manifesting superhuman abilities that briefly see the film trespassing into Chronicle-indebted territory. Likewise, there’s nothing particularly jarring about employing the same scare tactics ad nauseam. Alas, seeing creepy stuff go down in a house of horrors proves considerably less unsettling.
#PARANORMAL ACTIVITY THE MARKED ONES ARCHIVE#
What seems a bad idea proves just that when they discover an archive of VHS tapes labeled with extremely familiar names and a nursery stocked with decidedly unsterile surgical tools.Ī large part of the appeal and effectiveness of Peli’s original film was watching the uncanny happenings unfold in the unassuming confines of a suburban home. When the recluse is brutally murdered, Jesse and Hector break into her squalid apartment and indulge in some sub- Scooby Doo detective work. Residing below the boys is a living, breathing urban legend named Anna (Gloria Sandoval) who’s been labelled a “bruja” (witch) by the neighborhood kids. While these scenes may lack for major incidents, they do succeed in making these friends unexpectedly endearing fodder. Whether engaging in Jackass-ery, getting high or cajoling Jesse’s grandmother (Renée Victor) into downing tequila shots, they film everything with a handheld video camera. Subsequently adjourning to their two-story apartment block in the Latino neighborhood of Oxnard, Calif., for the summer, fresh-faced graduates Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) and Hector (Jorge Diaz) tellingly fall back into old habits. Rather hypocritically, Landon opens his film with a high school commencement speech extolling the virtues of change. Perhaps no other horror brand has adopted such a shamelessly McDonald’s-like approach to its notion of a “franchise.” What The Marked Ones delivers is ostensibly comfort chills and familiar shocks to unadventurous consumers who want to know precisely what type of terror they’ll be subjected to. Apparently, emulation is the aim here rather than innovation. Unsurprisingly, Landon’s work behind the camera suggests that he’s watched a lot of found-footage flicks, allowing him to effectively ape what’s come before without ever threatening to break the mold. Having written every installment since Paranormal Activity 2, he’s now handed the directorial reins for this supposed spin-off which, in actual fact, is not so much tied to the other films as leashed with a choke chain. While creator Oren Peli remains the name most readily associated with the Paranormal Activity series, it’s actually Christopher Landon who’s been more actively involved with guiding the franchise.