Paranormal Activity 4
2012 · Directed by Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Original language: English
- horror
The story
It has been five years since the disappearance of Katie and Hunter, and a suburban family witness strange events in their neighborhood when a woman and a mysterious child move in.
What it’s like
Grainy, flat digital footage shot on laptop webcams, security cameras and a handheld camcorder, so the picture is often low-resolution, washed-out and blue-grey in the dim suburban rooms of a California cul-de-sac. Most of the frame sits static and unblinking: a fixed view of a bedroom doorway, a kitchen counter, a garage, held long enough that the empty corners start to feel occupied. Night scenes lean on infrared and sodium-yellow streetlight, and the daytime suburbs look bland and sunlit, which makes the wrongness sharper. Sound does much of the work, with ambient hum, creaks, distant knocks and a sudden bang on the soundtrack, with almost no score to cue the scares. The vibe is uneasy domestic dread, a mild Halloween-season chill rather than an all-out assault. Scares arrive in short, sharp bursts with long stretches of waiting between, and violence is limited to a few jolting moments and rare bloodless harm; there is no gore and little sexual content. Best suited to a late, lights-off viewing with the sound up, and to viewers who enjoy slow-building found-footage dread and the mounting sense that a family's home is being watched.
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