directed by William Eubank
USA
98 minutes
3.5 stars out of 5
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I don't know if this came out of nowhere as much as it seemed to me that it did, or if I was just not paying attention, but a new Paranormal Activity movie was not on my radar this year. Much less one directed by William Eubank, who has been on my "people who I'd throw money at to see make a pure horror movie" shortlist. I appreciate him as a director because although he doesn't have many films to his name thus far, each one of them is distinct from the others in terms of subject matter and general vibe. And now he's contributed an entry to one of the most popular horror franchise of the 2000s, although the screenplay was written by someone else.
The Paranormal Activity series is heading in a weird direction, I guess, and I definitely don't dislike it. I've seen nearly all of them so far and I can say with confidence that all but the first one are pretty terrible. But maybe this is what can rescue the series: Divorcing itself almost entirely from the blueprint of the original, because sustaining that specific tone for close to fifteen years and in the hands of a multitude of different filmmakers is next to impossible. Turning into something like what Cloverfield seems to be edging towards could be great for the series. Maybe making this into an anthology series is what needs to happen to keep it fresh. Next of Kin resembles the previous PA films in essentially no way whatsoever, and it doesn't even have ghosts in it, if you can believe that.
Probably the biggest reason why this didn't feel like any of the other entries in the series is because it isn't strictly found-footage. Typically this would have annoyed me - either stick with being found-footage or abandon it altogether, you can't just do a hybrid of the two - but in this case, a departure from the norm is a breath of fresh air. The majority of it is filmed through cameras that the characters are holding, but here and there are a few complementary shots from a "fictional" perspective, showing the characters from the outside rather than as if they're interacting with one another. A small moment that I really loved was when Eubank seemed to be poking fun at his own signature slow-mo shots by having the cameraman explain how slow-motion filming works to a couple of small children in the background during one. I'm not sure if that was him lightly lampooning his own technique or if it was totally not meant as a joke, but if it was meant as a joke at his own expense, it makes me admire Eubank even more - to be able to say "I know this thing I always do is a little ridiculous, but I like doing it, so I'm going to keep doing it". Further slow-mo shots later in the movie confirm that he is still putting them in there remorselessly, even though it causes the found-footage facade to crumble a little more.
I was afraid that this movie was going to be all about how "weird" Amish people are, and would caricature them at best as backwards yokels and at worst as religious nutjobs with something to hide. I don't know why, but poor or comedic depictions of Amish people piss me off a lot. They don't deserve to be pointed and laughed at. But - and I can't fully explain why without spoiling the whole movie a little bit - the bizarre goings-on around the farm and cultish behavior the Amish family engages in is presented as markedly not the actions of real Amish people. That they are visibly Amish and known as being Amish to outsiders who would accept that as fact due to their ignorance about the community is important to certain elements of the plot.
Speaking of the plot... I feel like anybody watching this would be hard-pressed not to realize that literally everything that happens is thanks to the main characters all acting like unsupervised two-year-olds. Granted, nothing would progress the story if they didn't go snooping around where they were explicitly told not to and getting themselves into trouble by ignoring common sense, but especially at the end, the big picture becomes clearer and clearer, and that picture is that while the Amish were up to some suspicious stuff, a whole lot less people would have died if they'd been left to their own machinations and not spied on by some naïve twenty-somethings with no respect for boundaries. I personally liked the characters, because they had that vibe of casual camaraderie that the characters in The Signal also had, where they felt believable as friends (or at least friendly acquaintances) on a road trip. But your mileage may vary depending on how high your tolerance for people doing the exact opposite of what they're told is.
I guess my most damning criticism of this is that I definitely wouldn't have thought as much of it if it wasn't branded as a Paranormal Activity film. I liked it, but the interesting part comes from the fact that it's so different from what came before it. I enjoyed the chaotic last twenty minutes, which is somewhat of a trademark of the series, and the source of the horror is, like I said, not ghosts but something else older and more vicious. I would love to see the baton handed off to somebody new for the next entry and to have it be unrelated to this or any of the previous films, but a constant churning-out of PA-branded films could ruin the franchise as fast as this has renewed it.
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