Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension Chris J. Murray, Brit Shaw, Ivy George. Directed by Gregory Plotkin. Rated R. Now playing.
The Paranormal Activity franchise has become so convoluted that the last installment, 2014’s The Marked Ones, added in time travel, and that becomes central to the new sixth (and allegedly final) movie in the series, The Ghost Dimension. Promising to answer all the questions about the series’ haphazard mythology, The Ghost Dimension throws together some unsatisfying explanations along with its familiar creaks and loud noises, making for a pretty pathetic finale.
It took five credited writers to come up with yet another photogenic family plagued by creepy noises and an unexplained presence in their pristine suburban home. Ryan (Chris J. Murray) and Emily (Brit Shaw) worry that their young daughter Leila (Ivy George) is talking to someone who isn’t there, but when Ryan discovers a vintage video camera left behind by previous residents, he starts seeing a spectral entity following Leila around.
The previous residents, of course, were series staples Katie and Kristi, although the adult actresses who play the sisters don’t show up in this installment. Instead, Ryan finds videotapes of their childhood (which are a combination of new footage and scenes from the ’80s-set Paranormal Activity 3) and learns about the coven of witches that was using Katie and Kristi to summon the demon the children call Toby. The addition of more backstory doesn’t make the movie any scarier or more involving, and even though every single person in the audience knows what’s coming, director Gregory Plotkin (a veteran editor and producer on the series) still goes through the familiar motions of showing cameras around the house recording the mysterious goings-on over several nights.
The big difference here is that Katie and Kristi’s old camera somehow allows its users to see Toby, so that instead of things falling over and doors slamming without warning, now there’s a bunch of CGI globs flying around the room and causing havoc. If anything, seeing the demon only makes the movie less scary; the creepiest things about the previous movies have been what viewers filled in with their own minds. But showing Toby is part of the effort to turn this ungainly series into some kind of epic, complete with a time-travel portal and an ending that does more to set up potential sequels than bring the story to a close. If we’re lucky, the producers will keep their promise not to make any more.
