(Series alums Micah Sloan and Molly Ephraim also appear briefly.) One negative consequence from that link and the title is that we are constantly aware that The Marked Ones isn't blazing entirely new trails. With a subtitle instead of a number, this film is freed from establishing a firm connection to the original film's couple, although it still seizes an opportunity for a context-supplying Katie Featherston cameo that proves Landon is at least giving this some thought as a film universe. The video is often shaky, but disbelief isn't hard to suspend. With Hector usually in control, the camera keeps running even when it doesn't make sense to self-document, as in a crashed party or in the climax when a couple of armed gang members lead a rescue mission. The Marked Ones still belongs to the found footage genre, but it is less homebound and surveillancey in its design. There's also an old electronic Simon game functioning as a kind of Ouija board as it uses its red and green lights to answer Yes or No questions. (As usual, a dog is the first to notice something amiss.) While exploring the murder scene from which they witnessed class valedictorian uncharacteristically fleeing, the two friends discover that Jesse may be targeted by a coven of witches who abduct first-born sons around the world. Of course, with great power comes great unrest. Jesse and Hector document his newfound gifts, which find him able to inflate an air mattress in just a few seconds, keep his balance while leaning to extreme angles, and hurl gang members with a flick of the wrist. Jesse wakes up one morning with suspicious bite marks that seem to bestow upon him powers comparable to those gifted to Peter Parker by that radioactive spider. It's perhaps their first brush with the otherworldly, but certainly not their last. Intrigued by strange noises they hear through a vent, they thread a camera inside it and capture neighbors engaged in some naked ritual. The Marked Ones centers on Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) and Hector (Jorge Diaz), two best friends who have just graduated high school together with the Class of 2012 in Oxnard, California. Christopher Landon, who wrote that film and the two sequels before it, gets promoted to director on Marked Ones in addition to serving as its only credited scribe. The reviews were also worse than those of any installment but the deservedly maligned Paranormal Activity 4. At the same time, its returns were by far the brand's lowest to date. Grossing over $86 million worldwide on a production budget of just $5 million, Marked Ones must be considered a success commercially. Instead of the usual pre-Halloween debut for a sequel, Paramount released spin-off film Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones to theaters in January, a month when movies are expected to be bad and one in which they can succeed despite a lack of quality. In fact, the absence of a new Paranormal installment did not signal the end of an era but a change in strategy. It may have looked like surrender, much like the one that Lionsgate eventually,īegrudgingly gave their Saw franchise whose thunder the even more frugal and fruitful Paranormal series stole. Last October marked the first since 2008 in which Paramount Pictures did not have a Paranormal Activity film in theaters.
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