PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE GHOST DIMENSION
#31DaysOfHorror — October 24th
This October, for the second year in a row, I’ll be reviewing one horror movie each day! Respected classics, trashy and forgotten B-movies, both new frights and old… I love ’em all. Well, some of them I’ll probably hate. We’ll see.
The Plot
Ryan and his brother Mike discover a box in the attic that contains some old VHS tapes and a gigantic, bulky camera; the camera seems to have a unique ability to see things that aren’t quite there. As Ryan obsessively watches the tapes, which depict two young girls named Katie and Kristi who appear to be under the influence of a cult, Ryan’s own daughter Leila begins to act out. And… wait… can Katie and Kristi see him watching them through the TV screen?
To figure out who or what is visiting his daughter at night, Ryan sets up the old camera in her room… and he captures undeniable proof of something horrific going on in their house. It’s up to Ryan and his wife Emily to figure out how to stop the demonic visitations before their daughter is taken to another dimension to fulfill an ancient prophecy.
My Review
I’ve long considered Paranormal Activity my favorite horror franchise, maybe second only to Friday the 13th. Each film (with the exception of the 2014 “spinoff” The Marked Ones) refused to get complacent, innovating its filming style each time to mine new scares that were wholly dependent on things like editing and panning, among other filming techniques. Long stretches of each film take place in complete silence, leaving audiences with nothing to do but scan the frame, closely examine the mis-en-scene, and try to learn the rhythms of the editing, all in an attempt to figure out where the next manifestation of the paranormal entity is going to occur based on how the film itself is constructed.
Sure, you can call these jump scares and dismiss them outright as a form of horror that’s “less-than.” But I disagree. I think the franchise depends much more on suspense than on shock, way more than people tend to give it credit for. And I admire the franchise for the way it makes the found-footage format an integral part of the horror, rather than a cheaper way to film a horror story that would make more sense in a different format.
As the franchise has gone on, the mythology has become complex, bending inward on itself as characters in one movie literally open portals through time to the events of another. The Ghost Dimension requires a lot of knowledge of the earlier movies, so I can understand the common criticism that it’s too confusing and full of itself, but as a fan of the series, I found it rewarding. Perhaps not as rewarding as calling the film “the final chapter” in advertising would suggest I should, but rewarding nonetheless.
Like the earlier films, The Ghost Dimension finds a new way to make the film’s format provide scares, this time with the introduction of a modified camera that apparently allows for spirit photography. By adjusting knobs and lenses on the camera, Ryan and Mike believe they can see into the ghost dimension, thus allowing us to see the demon Toby for the first time.
This creates fantastic suspense when the spirit cam is set up as a security camera along with two others; the film cycles between the three streams of footage — living room. then hallway. then bedroom. — and we know that whenever we see the grainy VHS quality spirit cam, there’s the potential for paranormal activity to occur. And when we do see that demonic activity, but switch back to the living room, we know we have to wait, while the demon could be doing anything, to watch the hallway footage again before we’ll get to see the bedroom once more. It’s a quick and effective way to ratchet up the tension, forcing us to sweat it out, before we’ll get a glimpse once more into the ghost dimension.
The film also employs one other trick that I wish they’d used a bit better — it’s clear from the first few tapes the brothers watch that Katie and Kristi can actually see them watching, through the screen. This is used for a few effectively unnerving scenes, but then it’s almost entirely dropped. For a franchise so concerned with the boundaries between film(-within-a-film) and subject (aka, the demon), and the potential for the camera(-within-the-film) to disturb the spirit world, I thought the switch in direction from film(-within-a-film) to spectator(-within-the-film) was fantastic. No longer were the characters in the film using the camera to document the demon; now, the demon was using the presence of the camera to see the characters.
Not so coincidentally, The Ghost Dimension is the first Paranormal Activity film released in 3D; as the demon reaches through the found VHS tapes in order to haunt our characters, so too does Paranormal Activity reach out of the fourth wall to grab the (real-world) audience.
As for the not-great stuff… The Ghost Dimension does rely a lot more on cheap jump scares than any other entry in the franchise. Yes, there are great moments dependent on suspense, but there are also a lot of moments where something evil manifests just in time to rush the camera and shriek. If this camera really lets us see into the ghost dimension, the demon shouldn’t really be able to sneak up on us, should it?
Finally, I have some reservations about the end of the film. If I understood it correctly, I think it creates some paradoxes that I’m not sure the film is able to resolve… so, while I wasn’t wild about this installment, I’m gonna need another film, please, so I can figure all this out. I refuse to believe this is the final chapter… too many horror franchises have used that excuse and then come back from the dead anyway. Here’s hoping Paranormal Activity is one of them!
