User Reviews

What I loved about the first three installments of Paranormal Activity was that the scares were subtle and tension was built over time. Unfortunately, the fourth and now fifth installments of the franchise have fallen by the way of generic horror films of our day. The 4th movie had so much potential but fell completely short, and the 5th movie relies on all of the tried and tired possession plot lines.

You will definitely find some great "jumpy" scenes. Some you know are coming because they managed to create the tension, but some are completely unexpected. I also found the main characters very likable and funny...character development did not fall short at all like it did with the 4th film. The very best aspect of the movie is the highly touted surprise ending, which ties up all of the loose ends of the franchise.

I think some people are very confused by the progression of the Katie/Kristi story so I want to explain this a bit better. The story really begins with the prequel (PA3), showing Katie and Kristi's family being terrorized by "Toby"...a demon with whom the girls' grandmother has made a pact (to deliver the firstborn son of the family line). She is the leader of a coven of witches. It continues with PA2, which intertwines a bit with the first movie. Kristi has the firstborn son and the demon comes after him. Trying to ease the family's strife from the demon's presence, Kristi's husband performs a ceremony to sic the demon on Katie instead. The original movie follows Katie's terrorization and eventual possession. At the end of the movie we hear Katie screaming downstairs and Micah running down to help her. Moments later, Katie throws him bodily into the camera. Cutting back to PA2, we see Katie leaves her house and goes to Kristi's. She kills both Kristi and her brother-in-law (Kristi's stepdaughter Ali was on a school trip), and steals Hunter. This is why the 4th movie doesn't make much sense when you first view. Hunter has been adopted by a new family and Katie moves in across the street with a random little kid who introduces Hunter to the demon "Toby". That movie ends by the coven repossessing Hunter and killing his adoptive family.

I hated the 4th movie and thought that it was just filled with potholes, until seeing The Marked Ones. Jesse's downstairs neighbor is a part of the same coven as Katie and Kristi's grandmother, and her job is to create an army of demon children (marked ones) who will "activate" when they turn 18. When she dies, they investigate her apartment and find a journal that talks about a portal to dark places. Turns out Jesse was a "marked one", and is slowly possessed by a demonic force. To complete the possession, however, the coven must take him to their headquarters (Katie and Kristi's grandmother's house) and perform a final ceremony. Having consulted Ali from PA2, his friends know where the house is and go after him to stop the final ceremony. As his best friend is trying to run away from a fully possessed Jesse, he enters the portal and we find ourselves back in Micah and Katie's house, with Katie walking down the stairs in a trance and pulling a knife out of the kitchen drawer. The friend approaches her hoping for help and Katie starts yelling for Micah. Micah sees the friend and goes after him, but Katie stabs Micah instead...now we know exactly what happened downstairs in the first movie and why. It also answers the questions I had in the 4th movie. The random little boy living with Katie was obviously a "marked one".

So, is it a good film for the scares? Not so much. Is it good for understanding the franchise? ABSOLUTELY. If you're a loyal viewer, you have to watch it.

Halloween 2013 felt a little unremarkable this year, from the lack of spirit in my local neighborhood, the presence of only one theatrically-released horror film during the whole month of October (Carrie), and the first time since 2009 I didn't spend one Saturday morning in the theater watching an installment of the Paranormal Activity franchise. Call it a blessing, a curse, or what-have-you, I felt a tad incomplete. While each sequel to 2009's surprisingly great Paranormal Activity was significantly lacking in some way or another, I always looked forward to what exactly was in store for the next film. If that old saying was true, I'm a cat who lost all his nine lives rather quickly.

However, the January-release of Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones continues with my other unintentional-tradition that my first theater-film of the year is a very mediocre horror film, 2013's being Texas Chainsaw 3D and 2012's being The Devil Inside. The Marked Ones is the franchise's second spin off - if you count the Tokyo-released Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night (unseen by me), but I digress - jumbling up all that we came to know before, this time concerning a Latino family in the working/middle class, Hispanic neighborhood of Oxnard, California. The film revolves around Jesse (Andrew Jacobs), his buddy Hector (Jorge Diaz), and his sister Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh) as they experience obscure "paranomalities" after their elderly apartment neighbor dies in strange circumstances. Jesse and Hector would always hear odd sounds coming from their neighbor's home, which was located directly beneath there's, but now that she's dead, they discover something even more haunting - Jesse's gradual descent into troubling behavior.

Jesse discovers bite-marks on his arm, and begins to develop anti-social, aggressive tendencies towards random people and loved ones. He loses touch with reality, and himself, similar to another neighborhood friend named Oscar (Carlos Pratts), who we often see whipping around town during the night at hyper-speeds. As with the previous four films, the friends of the victim - in this case, his buddy and his sister - desperately try to piece together what exactly is happening with Jesse and what can be done to stop it.

Jesse has got to be one of the most fortunate victims in the Paranormal Activity franchise, spin off or not, because he is one of the few protagonists we become invested in just enough to care about when these events begin to occur. Past victims other than Katie in the original film have been difficult to sympathize with because we don't know a lot about them. Because the camera never leaves Jesse, and many scenes involve him doing pretty normal, day-to-day stuff with his equally likable buddy Hector, liking him and expressing a fondness for his character isn't an unheard of thing.

While this keeps The Marked Ones adequately afloat, the film still seems to suffer from an identity crisis, particularly with the heavy inclusion of comedy, which simultaneously makes the picture more interesting but also manages to throw it off. Consider the scene where Jesse, Hector, and Marisol screw about with a "Simon Says" toy, which only seems to utilize two of its four colors, green and red. When one of the three ask it a "yes or no" question, it replies with the corresponding colors. The scene is eerie, but because the friends make it out to be humorous throws kills the film's tone. When Jesse's descent into anti-social and borderline sociopathic tendencies come into play - about forty to fifty minutes into the film - is when the horror elements begin to make way and even those feel underwhelming.

I blame this on the commonality of these kinds of films in recent years. I hesitate greatly to rewatch the original Paranormal Activity because I fear that my extreme love and fondness for it was only so high because I hadn't seen a film like that in many years (at the time, of course). Watching The Marked Ones a surprising five years after the release of that film, I went from flinching and squirming in my seat to sitting idly by, watching everything happening on screen and never flinching or squirming once during its eighty-four minute runtime. All the scares feel perfunctory and, someone like me who has seen so many found footage films since 2009 (I reckon roughly twenty), I feel like an expert on the genre and as if I'm one step ahead of it for the entire time.

And, once more, we get little idea as to what is haunting these characters. Again, the film offers more cute little twists (I'm completely lost at what the ending we're given here is getting at and when it takes place in this series' timeline), plot-strands, and such minimal exposition as to what is haunting these characters, it's as if asking for more information is a pointless request that will do nothing but waste your breath.

I applaud Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones for three things: one, giving us a character we can like and sort of connect with two, not turning out to be the abysmal film the trailer made it look like, with its production values and editing that resembled a fan-made homage to the franchise by teenagers on Youtube, and three, giving me an opportunity to exercise my one and a half years of public school Spanish. While the film is different from its predecessors in several aspects, it still reeks of the smothering sameness of them in several areas as well. All I can say at this point is simply "next."

Starring: Andrew Jacobs, Jorge Diaz, and Gabrielle Walsh. Directed by: Christopher B. Landon.

Just got back from seeing this and I was admittedly skeptical watching the trailer feeling as though it had steered off in a completely irrelevant direction, but was ultimately pleasantly surprised.

It does a good job of tying up links and answering questions made by previous installments, whilst also opening up new ones for future sequels. There's also lots of subtle little clues, hints, and links to notice throughout the movie that link to the others, which is also interesting to see if you're a fan.

The only negative thing I have to say about it is that *spoilers* when Jesse got possessed by the demon on becoming 18, he gained supernatural like abilities. The film spent a lot of time focusing on this fairly irrelevant footage, and felt too similar to Chronicle, another film in the found footage sub-genre.

Overall, I loved this film and the doors the ending opened for future installments. I also like the ever growing complexity of the Katie / Kristi / Hunter / Grandma Lois / Toby story line, which this film contributed greatly towards. The Marked Ones is great story-wise, so fans will undoubtedly enjoy it.

Boy, I gotta praise these Paranormal Activity films. They sure know how to take scenes and sounds that might be considered scary and turn them into predictable, boring, funny and least of all, not terrifying strung together YouTube clips.

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, which is either Part 5, a spin-off, chapter, homage or whatever, is literally just the same as the rest of the franchise with the slight exception of location. No longer are we mercifully subjected to seeing the same living room, kitchen, dining room, bedrooms, hallways, staircases or chandeliers 50x with nothing going on. Instead, we're in the slums and a crummy apartment. I actually give the movie credit for that "change."

The rest is the same old story: Someone who never knows how or when to put a video camera down watches as someone else gets very slowly possessed, does an extremely half-assed job of investigation and finally gets taken over.

Jesse and his homoerotic (or I wished) best bud film every uneventful second of their equally boring life following High School graduation when the suspected witch downstairs is murdered. Oh, no, here comes yet another possession.

There's a point to where screenplay writers want to give the audience what they desire when they pen a script, but to do it repeatedly for 4 additional films and leave zero shocks, surprises, intrigue or freshness, they should be blacklisted right out of Hollywood.

I will say this for a positive: despite absolutely nothing going on for the first half of the movie, at least it wasn't as gut wrenching and unintentionally hilarious as the last half. I couldn't help but laugh in the theatre when characters are running for their lives from things not really scary or original and never instinctively dropped the camera. I literally was pointing at the screen in the right spots for the "big shocks" to come.

If you've seen the first four movies – and for that, I applaud you made it this far; I hope you got a huge prize for that awful bet your friend made you – you've seen this movie. Skip it.

* * * Final thoughts: Had Jesse and Hector, the two male leads in this mundane episode, not been so incredibly cute, I'd have absolutely nothing to look at in this movie. Sadly, one of them spent the bulk of his screen time behind the camera, but at least I could wake up once he got in front of the camera.

Wow... I can't believe they did it. They movie is horrible. PA 1-3 were a good trilogy, but 4 and this junk lowered it down tremendously. This really is becoming the saw franchise. First 3 good, the rest were bad. This series is saddening me, PA 1 was scary, this is not. Everything in this film you expect. I mean come on we all know when a character stands near a curtain yelling for someone something is going to pop out. Then the stupid rip off of chronicle, which is sad very sad come on Christopher Landon, do you not have any of your own ideas. Even the action scenes are all cheesy. Still going to see it? We'll think about this, I usually rate movies 6-10 with a few exceptions. This is only my second 1 star rating. The other being Percy Jackson: sea of cheese. It is not so bad that it's fun either. I was bored out of my mind. Oh and the stupid twist to connect this with the others was horrible it ruined everything! Again to quite Jeremy Jahns " Paranormal activity: the marked ones is Dogsh**.

From beginning to end, it's awful, If you're watching the whole series just stop at the 3rd. The makers of this movie should offer refunds for putting this garbage out. It's a film just to make money from the loyal PA fans.

I also hate film makers that think harming (or pretending to harm) dogs or animals is any way a selling point or humorous. Get a grip, get a life, and get some real ideas instead of living off the popularity of a set of films.

If you're going to watch this at all, don't, just go find another movie on the shelf.

So I went to see this tonight and I don't really know what to say about I because wasn't really expecting much going into the cinema. All their movies are too hipped and quite a lot of them fail to deliver. Everyone says I'm wrong about this but I think the newer the films are the more they progress and are better than the previous.

This movie took a completely different approach from the others, hand held yes but different locations fully. Which was good but I felt that there was too much pointless dialogue which led to e getting bored at some points. The jump scares where simple but they were the only thing that I think the film had going for it. The more it got into the problem. The more it seemed to e the same as the others really. I love demons and stuff to do with them don't get me wrong but hen they were taking about it it just felt really childish in all honestly.

The ending was my favourite bit. As always with these films. I really liked the link towards the third movie with the corridor because I remember this as one of them scenes that did creep me out. I thought the original time travel aspect was really good which led to seeing the house hat was involved in the first movie. This was something I will give them credit for. I thought the action scenes with the shotguns was actually hilarious.

Id say I would recommend this to people who have really liked the previous five films because although it was completely different and no that 'Night One' crap it still had a similar concept. Not too bad at all though. Wouldn't rule it out to any horror fan. Luckily I know someone who works in the cinema and I didn't have to pay.I think 5/10 is perfect for this because a usually rate a lot of horrors 6/7 if they impress me but it didn't entirely do that so ill stick with the five.

I'm latino so it was good to see this take place in a latino community but other than that, I thought this film was just as bad as part 4 (but it is not a direct sequel nor does it "continue" the Katie/Kristi storyline). It's horrifyingly slow as the fourth film as well.

Just like many other reviews have stated, the film relies on cheap scare tactics that the other PA films have relied on. Dropping to a dead silence and a loud sound following is not scary by any means. The marked ones doesn't do anything different that you haven't already seen really. One thing different which was by far more stupid than the entire kitchen disappearing and crashing from the ceiling in part 3 was Hector recording the living room and you can clearly see space bending and all of a sudden, a possessed Jesse appearing out of nowhere floating in midair causing everything to go all over the place.

Storyline wise, I think it messed up by trying to tie itself into the other movies. You're lead to assume this takes place in the year 2012, which is fine, until the last few minutes when you see Hector run into Katie and Micah's house with Micah alive, which then you see Katie repeatedly stab Micah in the chest. As the audience, this throws the entire timeline out the window. It was revealed in part 2 that Micah is dead, which took place in 2006. You're also introduced to Ali, the step-niece of Katie in part 2. In The Marked Ones, Ali is called by Hector in an effort to help save Jesse... in 2012. All that I'm saying is, storyline wise it makes sense. Timeline, no way. On a positive note, you actually see how Katie killed Micah but thats about it.

The "saving grace" for the Marked Ones could have been if it was its own separate movie with its own storyline and timeline, which it was until the Katie, Kristi, Micah, and Ali characters were brought in to try and poorly tie itself into PA 1 and 2 and a small bit of 3.

Worth a watch to laugh at with your friends but for the storyline which unfortunately tied itself into the other movies to make itself cannon, you will be greatly disappointed.

After watching the first three PA's, my expectations were high so I took my girlfriend to go see it at a midnight opening at our local cinema. After buying our overpriced snacks and tickets we chose our crumb covered seats and sat down to watch this movie expecting scares, scares and more scares. As soon as the movie started I knew it wasn't for me, I went the bathroom, came back twenty minutes later (curry was a bad choice) and had missed nothing, i began longing to be back in that cubicle, dreaming of its cold hard ceramic seat and the splish and splash of my droplets. After another 20minutes of viewing me and my girlfriend began talking of things more interesting to do, a guy in the front seat whipped his laptop out and began skyping a friend telling them how poor this movie was. The plot was terrible, the actors/characters were terrible and ending was so bad that if it wasn't orange Wednesdays, i'd have asked for my money back.

Let me start off by saying I am a fan of the PA series. However, I have yet to be scared by one of their titles.

***If you get motion sickness at all, DO NOT see this movie*** My entire party got sick during this film as about 95% of the movie is shot in a first person home video camera style. The camera bounces around constantly..literally constantly, and I felt like leaving the theater a couple times. If you are confused what I mean by this, see the movie Chronicle.

The movie itself was bland. It lacked character depth and really any "story". Nothing really happened and I cant really say it built up to anything. It was just 1) lady downstairs is weird 2)what are these powers 3)Jesse is some kind of monster 4)Wait,what? 5)Over. I feel this movie was a huge step backward. Would have liked to see more of the cast from the original movies.

I loved all the paranormal activity before. Not sure what they were thinking when they made this. I laughed through most of the movie because it seemed like a spoof film about horror movies. Very disappointing. The end was confusing and involved gang-bangers with guns, who are unsuccessful in killing off the hordes of witches. There are some pop outs, but most of them you see coming. The friend "Hector" was great in the movie. He was quite comical and had some funny t-shirts but his performance isn't enough to save this stinker.

Lucky the movie is only about an hour and a half, though I felt like It dragged on for hours. I should have guessed it was a stinker when the audience only consisted of my party of three, and a few pre-pubescent boys the second week it was in theaters.

Take my advice skip this movie and go to something else. If you really must watch it. Wait until it comes out for rental on DVD, and don't spend more than .99 to rent it.