They say it’s impossible to get blood from a stone, but I’ll be darned if Paranormal Activity hasn’t tried. I, personally, am not a hater of this series and have defended, time and again, not only the original movie, but the two that followed and managed to build a mythology in the process. Unfortunately, that mythology became a mess in The Marked Ones and has become a sewer in The Ghost Dimension.
This movie is a tedious bore that reeks of desperation so much so that they openly and gleefully sacrifice the one thing that made these movies scary, the monster’s appearance. Where before, the enigmatic demon, Toby, was left to our imagination. The Ghost Dimension doesn’t trust the audience to have an imagination, so it has Toby showing up in all of his glorious CGI glory.
It’s not a bad effect. It’s actually rather chilling, but it’s not the most chilling it can be because the most frightening monster of all is locked up in our own imaginations. The Ghost Dimension has taken that away from us… it would be like someone casting Sandra Bullock as The Blair Witch.
This is the least of the movies problems as the visible ghosts are actually kind of cool sometimes. The real problem of The Ghost Dimension is that the characters are stupid, the dialogue is bad, and the pacing is glacial. I swear, if these idiots would just watch their own tapes that they’re recording all of the time, half of the confusion they experience would be erased. But no… Horror movies this lazy need stupid characters and you don’t get much stupider than a mom and dad who know that their little girl is about to be kidnapped by a demon, but still allows her to sleep alone.
Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension is a faltering franchise’s final desperate gasp before sinking into the ocean of obscurity. It’s not scary, it’s annoying, and it’s a little sad to see a film grasp at straws this weakly just to get a few more drops of blood from an already drained stone.
Jason Gaston 