In a found footage movie, a titillating sense of dread should hang so heavy you can choke on it. The premise itself promises that whatever hellish tale is about to unfold ended with this cursed footage abandoned. Within these reels (or video files) lies the frightening answers to what became of the plucky heroes in those first frames. Though the concept has been around for decades, found footage got burst of fresh life thanks to Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity (2007). Plenty of imitators followed, including seven sequels. Sadly, the latest, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, is a sloppy reboot that repackages a smattering of horror trends to create an insipid offering that suggests it’s time for this franchise to finally die.
Christopher Landon, who scripted Paranormal Activity’s 2-5, returns with another tale of a girl, caught on tape dabbling with the demonic. Forget tormented Katie and her evil friend Tobi. They’ve got no role here. Instead, Emily Bader stars as Margot, a young woman who is making a documentary about the search for her long-lost birth mother. One DNA match on 23andMe later, she and her skeleton crew of a cameraman (Roland Buck III) and a sound guy (Dan Lippert) follow a freshly unearthed relative (Henry Ayres-Brown) to a remote Amish farmhouse in upstate New York. However, Margot doesn’t get the warm welcome she’d expected. Before long, she’s uncovering strange details about her missing mom. Then, inexplicable sounds begin to call to her from the attic.
Like the other Paranormal Activity movies, Next of Kin has a found footage framework, supernatural horror, and jump scares. At this point though, it feels like Landon is going through the motions. Rather than creating personalities or presenting relationships that might bond us to the heroes, he chucks us into their doc without any warning. There is little detail on who Margot is beyond an adopted daughter with a quest and a vanity project.
Why is it important to her to meet her mom? Why does she want that experience to be a movie? What do the parents who raised her think about all this? Who knows! They’re never mentioned. Instead, the first act barrels through introducing her and her crew as if Landon resents the task. So: one is a quiet Amish guy. One is a wise-cracking comic relief. The other is...also in this movie and is maybe Margot’s boyfriend? Honestly, it’s difficult even describing them this much, as the movie is so utterly disinterested in its characters.
The farm setting is established with the same enthusiasm. A tour of the house and grounds might give a sense of geography, that could brew tension through anticipation in chase scenes. But nope. Instead, director William Eubank hides behind the clunky camerawork oft-found in found footage. Action scenes are are blurs of shadow and motion, and then some tedious sequences of running through the trees of the surrounding forest. With no apparent concern for character building, too many scenes are nakedly setting up future scares (hey look at this hayloft, bet that’ll be important later!) and leaning into random horror tropes for a slapped-together spookiness. Leering shots at the Amish, their elderly, and a distant chapel are meant to trigger tremors of terror. But without proper world-building, these just seem like harmless elements of rural America.
Perhaps Eubank is trying to cash in on the broader contextual fears stoked by M. Night Shyamalan, who had an Amish-like setting for The Village and centered scares on the elderly and aging in Old and The Visit. Perhaps Eubank is attempting to tap into the othering that’s seen in folk horror films like The Witch or Midsommar. In that subgenre, a metropolitan hero — often on a quest — wanders into a remote, rural environment, convinced their reason and intellect will protect them from the superstitions of the locals. However, Margot and her friends are barely established, so they do not come off as worldly or intellectual. Between poorly scripted conversations, they come off as gawkers who have done zero research into the town, this family, or even the Amish at large. So, the could-be tension is undermined by their slack-jawed gawping. Their touristy attitude also undermines the conceit that they’re making a documentary. So, their so-called doc becomes a lazy justification for why the camera is always running, even when they are running for their lives.
Landon doesn’t make worthwhile use of the documentary concept. His script shies away from interview scenes (unlike The Visit), and Eubank fails to even create B-roll footage that could be studded with scares or create a spooky atmosphere. Instead, he gives us waves and waves of snow-capped trees, the kind of footage that blandly plays over everything from true-crime shows to weather reports. Inherently spooky, trees are not. The same goes are old people and the Amish.
The crux of what made Paranormal Activity, and several of its sequels, so damn scary was that you didn’t need to leave the safety of home to be attacked by an unseen evil. Evil could already be cozied up in your attic, snatching the covers off your bed, and gnawing away at your soul as you sleep. Next of Kin has forgotten the power of such homespun horror, and in doing so has snatched from other subgenres without understanding how their scares work. Folk horror is all about atmosphere, which Next of Kin utterly lacks. Somehow, it races through setup yet feels like a slog. Once, the reveals about this farm’s evil are uncovered, it all feels too familiar. So even though you haven’t seen this movie, you probably have.
There’s only one sequence that actually made goosebumps — and my hopes —rise ever so briefly. After muddled introductions and eye-roll-worthy explanations about how cameras work (slo-mo is a function!), Margot wanders alone into the attic at night. Approaching footsteps urge her to hide under the bed. We are trapped with her there, waiting for something to happen. The possibilities at that moment were delectably tense because anything could happen. But what does is not scary. It’s a shrug. As if this franchise can’t be bothered to for anything else anymore.
Other shortcuts are taken throughout. A cutaway to introduce the cameraman is inexplicable in a found footage film where he's holding the camera. Non-diegetic sound to reflect someone's senses being hindered after being concussed doesn't make sense if this is meant to be found footage, neither does a needling score intended to tweak suspense sequences. But most frustrating of all is that characters don't behave rationally or even remotely relatable. They behave as the script requires, which makes the film increasingly infuriating and even insulting. It's as if Landon and Eubank think their audience can't tell — or perhaps doesn't care — about quality, only quantity. So, naturally, this agonizing misfire aims for another sequel.
Found footage horror has birthed a lot of bad entries. Because their plotlines justify sloppy camerawork, small casts, and few locations, they are cheaply produced; and therefore plentiful. Some filmmakers have found freedom in these confines, creating original stories that are ruthlessly scary, like Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch Project, and Unfriended. But many, many more scrimp on character development, rehash iconic scares, and slather gore or action over a climax to hide a lack of emotional depth and stakes. Unfortunately, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is a found footage movie that shows no passion for the subgenre or even an understanding of what can make it sublime. It’s not exciting or scary or comically bad. It is a shrug, nodding that it’s time for horror heroes to put the cameras down and get back to running downs paths truly unknown.
Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin begins streaming exclusively on Paramount+ on Oct. 29.
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