I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Save for a few obvious differences, this movie is a carbon copy of The Blair Witch Project. Oddly enough this one is too straight-faced to be an Asylum production, despite its shameless imitation. They even find a house in the woods during the film’s climax…
Or 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck as it is known on IMDB.com. Just as Paranormal Entity (2009) was a blatant cash-in for The Asylum on Paranormal Activity (2007), part 4 is a shameless rip-off of Grave Encounters (2011). And a bad one at that. Usually even Asylum applies its own barrage of cheesy deviations, but this has to be the laziest, most unoriginal piece they have ever produced.
Why this movie was necessary, I do not know. It’s not scary. There’s no tension. Where the entertainment factor is concerned franchise spin-off The Marked Ones is better. It’s actually better in almost every way. As well as squeezing another hundred mil out of loyal fans, in hindsight it was probably the best way to introduce the ridiculous time portal mythology to the series’ otherwise reality-based format. A very disappointing conclusion to a franchise that was nearly half-decent.
It may have some creepy moments. It may have some tricks up its sleeve. But that doesn’t hide the fact that this movie makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Our leading man wants to disprove the paranormal by attempting to be possessed by demons because a psychic’s advice may have caused the death of his wife... What the actual fuck??? So disproving the existence of demons somehow disproves all things that are supernatural? How does that work? Even if you could answer that one – which you can’t – the character of Michael King is the dumbest motherfucker in found footage history. Never mind his motives, which have so many holes a person could get trypophobia. Who the hell actually tries to be possessed? I mean, seriously!
What this movie, and so many other wannabes of its kind seem to forget is that the quality of a possession movie is dependent upon the character who is possessed. The actress in this case fails miserably. Her constant scowl is not that of a mischievous demon, but of a spoilt bitch of a teenager. And given that she is mostly mute, she’s quite a boring one at that. Considering what the production team had at their disposal, the location, for one example, they didn’t put any of it to great use. No surprises. Nothing new. The ending was also quite dismissive of the film’s journey and very anti-climactic. Was it a stab at realism? Maybe, but a misguided one.
Whilst it had an original setting for the sub-genre, Pyramid is a highly predictable movie that wastes any and every opportunity to create some fantastic tension. The lame CGI, particularly Anubis destroys whatever power the movie has left as he looks like a Scooby-Doo villain. And if the monster of your movie doesn’t look scarier than James Buckley, you might as well quit now. A standout performance from Denis O’Hare is expected, but never arrives.
The film that made claustrophobia boring. Despite the suffocating confines of their quarters, the limitations of where the astronauts can go and what they can do soon turns the movie’s feel from a slow burn to a sluggish bore. Even worse is that the pay-off, the reward for a patience well-tested, isn’t worth the effort.
Just as Black Water took from the Blair Witch, and Paranormal Entity 4 took from Grave Encounters, Cellblock 11 – the latest ghost hunters in a haunted asylum movie – has a wealth of found footage fodder to choose from, to learn from, to improve on… And does absolutely nothing with it. Nothing new. Not a single flair of inspiration. It’s Paranormal Entity 4.2. And that shiny green slipcase was so pretty, too…
A couple’s little girl is a devil child. But why does this movie suck so badly? Well, to put it kindly, the acting is bad. The script is atrocious, packed with pointless filler. Plus, these people should not be parents because they swear like teenagers in a park all the way through. The editing is so bad that jump scares are completely missed out as they just skip to the next day before you’ve even realised what’s going on. This movie also makes the mistake of showing its demons…and one of them is gold… Yeah, you read that right. Gold…
This one was no.1 on my Top 10 Worst Horror Films of 2015. Everything about this film is just sad, beyond amateurish, a waste of time. Avoid. It’s a pathetic piece of shit, not worth the accelerant it would take to burn it.