Three years on from Paranormal Activity 4, we're finally about to reach the conclusion of the entire Paranormal Activity saga. Spin-off 'sidequel' **The Marked Ones **did something to fill the hiatus early last year while Team Paranormal wrestled with where to take the main story, but with that screenplay cracked and production now complete, here's the latest trailer to warn us what's in store...
The family enduring the scares this time are Ryan, Emily, their daughter Leila, and Ryan's younger brother Mike. Another daughter has died a year previous to the film, which will almost certainly tie into events here. The location is Palo Alto, where the clan has just moved from New York, so that video game designer Ryan can start his new job.
Emily, meanwhile, is an Earth mother type who does yoga, while Leila is described as a tomboyish combination of her big-kid dad and more mature mom… Oh, and Katie Featherstone returns in demonic guise. It’s a chance to explore how the Bloody Mary saga got started in the first place. But where's Hunter?...
"Four was a tricky one," said series writer/producer and The Marked Ones' director Christopher Landon recently. "There were a lot of balls in the air. It didn't come together as a whole. I think there are some fun moments and great scares and we got some stuff right, but where we really dropped the ball is we didn't advance the mythology and left the audience in a narrative wasteland. A big part of my job on The Marked Ones was to win people back and let them know we're going to keep pushing things forward."
The Marked Ones, it turns out, is not quite the standalone it appeared to be. "We want all the movies to be connected," Landon says. "[Part Five's director and long-term Paranormal series editor] Gregory Plotkin and I had discussions about it. The end of The Marked Ones ties into the fifth film. I think Gregory [has taken] it in a very cool direction."
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension is released, back in its usual Hallowe'en-ish slot, on October 23.