Paranormal Activity 4 wants to be the scariest entry in a franchise built on cheap scares. It mostly fails. The film follows teenager Alex Nelson as she documents strange events in her neighborhood after a boy named Robbie moves in with his sick mother, who turns out to be Katie, the demon-possessed sister who abducted Alex’s cousin Hunter years earlier. The setup is simple. The execution is not.
Trailer, via Blumhouse.
Robbie’s Arrival
Robbie stays with the Nelsons while his mother is hospitalized. Wyatt, Alex’s younger brother, tells Alex about Robbie’s imaginary friend Toby, and Alex finds Robbie in a closet saying “He doesn’t like you watching us.” That line is the closest the film comes to genuine dread. The rest is a steady diet of floating objects, moving furniture, and Robbie’s green Hittite symbol, which prepares a victim for demonic possession. The film also leans heavily on consumer tech — Skype calls and an Xbox Kinect camera — to keep the found-footage format feeling current.
Katie’s Return
It is revealed that Robbie’s mother is Katie. She tells Wyatt that he and Robbie were adopted and that his other family needs him back. Robbie argues with an unseen, unheard presence about his true name, declaring, “My name is not Hunter!” That line is the film’s clearest moment of tension. Everything else is a slow build toward a climax that never quite arrives.
“All the activity has led to this…”
The tagline promises a conclusion. The film does not deliver it.
A Mixed Legacy
Paranormal Activity 4 was released in the United States on October 19, 2012, by Paramount Pictures. Made on a budget of $5 million, it grossed $143 million and received mixed reviews from critics. Its sequel, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014), followed. The film’s success was built on low cost, not quality.
The acting is competent across the board. Kathryn Newton plays Alex with a mix of curiosity and fear that grounds the story, and Aiden Lovekamp’s Wyatt is genuinely unsettling as a young boy who sees things the adults cannot. Brady Allen’s Robbie is quiet and unsettling in his own way. The adults — Matt Shively as Ben, Stephen Dunham as Doug Nelson, Alexondra Lee as Holly Nelson — play their roles competently but are given little to do beyond react to the chaos around them.
Katie Featherston returns as Katie, reprising her role from earlier films. Her performance is adequate, but she is mostly a vessel for the film’s supernatural mechanics rather than a fully realized character. The supporting cast, including Georgica Pettus as Sarah Degloshi and Alisha Boe as Tara, rounds out the neighborhood without adding much depth.
Where It Falls Short
The film’s biggest sin is its failure to earn its scares. It sets up a threat, then pulls its punches. The possessed Katie sneaks in, says her line, and the screen goes dark. The audience waits for the payoff, and it never comes. The film leaves the question open without answering it.
The technology on display — Skype, the Kinect camera — is meant to feel current, but it reads as a gimmick. The film is trying to modernize the found-footage format, but it does so without changing the underlying problem: the scares are cheap and obvious. A chandelier that floats is a trick. A knife that moves on its own is a trick. Neither is scary because neither is earned.
Paranormal Activity 4 is a cash grab dressed up as a horror film. It is made with care and talent, but it is ultimately a film that knows what scares work and chooses not to use them. The result is a movie that is forgettable in the best case and actively unpleasant in the worst.
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