Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. 2015
Directed by Gregory Plotkin
Starring Chris J. Murray, Brit Shaw, Ivy George, Dan Gill, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Chloe Csengery, Jessica Tyler Brown, and Michael Krawi
SYNOPSIS:
Using a special camera that can see spirits, a family must protect their daughter from an evil entity with a sinister plan.
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension is unquestionably one of the worst films of the year. It’s a movie so bad that physically writing about it is somehow just as tedious as watching the 85 minute flick. This review sounds incredibly harsh right off the bat, but I literally don’t have a shred of positivity to call attention to, so you may as well only continue reading if you’re curious just as to how and why this supposed finale to the cultural phenomenon is so atrocious.
For starters, even calling it a cultural phenomenon anymore feels wrong, as the appeal of these films fizzled out after the third film. Even so, that movie was nothing special either. So here we are with the sixth entry in the franchise, as I pray to any and every deity that may or may not exist to never curse me with having to write about another one of these repetitive, lazy, annoying, uninteresting, laborious pieces of garbage ever again.
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension is the same shit we have seen over and over for the past six years. A family moves into a house, uncovers some dark secrets leading to a hunch that evil spirits may be involved, as we then witness them filming every single facet of their life until they are killed off one by one during the climax. As usual, none of the family members are likable, often cracking jokes that aren’t funny, which simply makes for horrific dialogue. There is also always a few characters that are convinced nothing spooky is going on until shit hits the fan.
Where Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension truly goes down the toilet however is by actually creating a visual manifestation of Toby, the malevolent ghost roaming around the household. Toby is depicted as a bunch of hideous (hideous as in ugly special-effects) floating black sludge that likes to crash-zoom into various cameras set up throughout the various rooms. Furthermore, that’s essentially what you witness for 85 minutes.
Things do get a little hectic towards the end, but it’s all incredibly over-the-top with characters being mutilated one after the other by Toby. It’s a shame because the marketing leads fans of the series to believe that this is the last installment and that all of the loose ends regarding the mythology (which isn’t that interesting anyway, but might be for some people out there) will all get wrapped up like a nice Christmas present, except there is quite a bit left open to interpretation. What’s most baffling is that Katie, the one constant reoccurring character in every movie of the franchise, isn’t here at all aside from the child variation of her that is explored within the homemade videotapes.
The most unforgiving aspect of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension isn’t the hokey dialogue with moron protagonists that have the personality of a cardboard box, the ghastly CGI that elicits no scares whatsoever, or the dissatisfying conclusion of the grander narrative, but rather the fact that the movie is absolutely exhausting to watch from start to finish. It doesn’t matter whether you’re getting to know the obnoxious family, watching Toby haunt the house with cliché jump scares, or watching him cause destruction, viewers will want this experience to be over with roughly 8 seconds after it begins. Fuck this movie – it’s one of the worst films of the year, and if there’s never another iteration or spin off the franchise it will be about four movies too soon.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Robert Kojder – An aficionado of film, wrestling, and gaming. Follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=m8ExzVWul3I
Originally published October 23, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
