Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

It has been a bit of a break since I have been on here, and December brought with it very little activity.  The first half of the month was lost due to nasty illness that rendered me mentally stagnent, and the most recent absence was due to a move that happened shortly after the holidays.  Christmas is enough to stress me out, but having to move just three days after that occupied all of my time for the last three weeks.  We are now relocated, settled in, and the writing begins again.  Today I look at a film that is the first wide release of the new year, and if you are interesting in reading my prediction of how I felt it would do in theatres (as well as some pre-viewing analysis on the context of movie) you can read that here.

Going into Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, it was easy for me to have an absolute truck load of pre-conceived notions about what the movie would be.  Most of that stems from movies of the Paranormal Activity series being very similar and walking audiences through the same paces that it established in 2009 when the first movie entered theatres.  Normally the movie centres around white people who live in large homes who become tormented by ghosts and also decide to capture their lives on video camera.

The Marked Ones is not a direct sequel of the franchise, but rather a Hispanic spin-off.  Before this film came out, I had many worries about how the characters would be written and portrayed, that they would be relegated to stereotypes of gangs, living in bad neighbourhoods, Catholicism, gardening and being maids.  My fears were founded on the one dimensional depiction of white characters that could be seen in the other films, which lead me to believe there would be a massive misunderstanding of how to film a story about Mexican Americans.  The trailers for the film almost reinforced my fears and left me thinking more so about the racial aspects of this film than the horror elements, which are what is supposed to drive it.

After having seen it, however, I must concede that this is my favourite of the Paranormal Activity movies.  With that being said, it is not my highest rated of the films, with the original getting two stars.  The reason why it is less than a movie which I did not enjoy as much is because of the ‘found footage’ format which all of the franchise have adopted.  With The Marked Ones, the audience is given for the first time characters that are multi-dimensional and scenes which sprawl over a number of settings.  This movie would have been so much better if it was just shot in a normal format, because it became very insulting after a while at their inability to have the camera being constantly turned on a believable element of the film.

The main characters of the film are Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) and Hector (Jorge Diaz) who are young men who get infatuated with a camera.  Well, specifically, I believe it is Jesse who gets his hands on the camera after graduating high school, and the two friends start filming absolutely everything.  This is the kind of concept that would have worked very well in the late 80s and into the 90s as I remember so many times there would be mass amounts of excitement when someone had access to a camera.  Set in present day, I have no idea how any such excitement could exist as they are everywhere and the guys have them built right into their phones.  There would be very little that would be special about getting a video camera that would cause it to be on non-stop.

Perhaps I am maybe sounding like I am sticking onto this whole camera thing a little too much, but it is essential to the film.  There was a time when found footage movies were made to show stories that made sense to the medium, such as catching the final moments of young adults who mysteriously vanished into the woods.  By this point in the franchise, people record things on cameras for the sake of the movie, and it fails to feel like we are being witness to actual events.  If it is so hard to make it become natural for the camera to be in operation then perhaps it is best to abandon the style and switch formats.

While the story is hidden behind a format that does not allow its full potential, moments and elements are still able to poke their head through.  The teenage boys are written and acted well, and they have a great deal of charm that feels very natural to them being typical adolescents.  It is in the interactions between the boys that the film is at its best, and the found footage style rarely allows us to see them in the same frame as one is usually filming.  As well as having a good duo of characters (interesting characters is something the series usually falls short on), the story and mystery are interesting enough to keep one’s attention.  It is these aspects that elevate this film past its predecessors in a way.

This is the hard part, because as I have mentioned it is the best, it is also not as good as the first film.  The Marked Ones suffers from relying on the same scares and tension building techniques that have been over-used through the series, and a number of the clichés are in existence (such as a third party swooping in to deliver all of the relevant information).  Paranormal Activity movies have relied on formula to the point where the audience is beaten into submission, and The Marked Ones was a great opportunity to leave that all behind and tell an interesting tale.  Sadly, instead it chose to follow convention for the sake of it which played horribly into a movie that had underlying potential to be a stand-alone classic.

Rating – 1.5 out of 4 stars