When a young father finds a strange video camera in a box in his garage, he experiments with it and soon discovers it has the ability to record the paranormal. Unfortunately, that also means that he has the ability to record the ruin of his family.
We say, “Pray it’s finally over.”
TAYLOR: Hooray! The liars club announced they’re done feeding us bologna. They’ve saved all their conclusions for this final instalment and pulled out all the stops: 3D ghosties, portals to hell, evil conspiracies. Plus, because of this wacky camcorder, we now get to see what is tormenting our hapless family. If I wasn’t already sick of the Paranormal Activity format, this fifth instalment might have impressed me. As it is, it is merely adequate. Seeing the evil helps. The evil having a goal helps and 3D helps, but we’re still dealing with the same old silliness.
HOWE: I thought it was still a pretty pathetic final instalment. I watched a Goosebumps episode last night with my little boy and I found that more entertaining and scarier than this. In fact, I found it scarier than all the Paranormal series put together. The whole franchise is pretty weak, no thrills or scares. It relies mostly on cheap tricks to make you jump. There is no buildup of tension to get the heart racing.
TAYLOR: Is fear the reason you didn’t want to go review Goosebumps the movie? You’re always going on about how scary it is. Well, I liked the idea behind the Paranormal Activity films, at first: some weird stuff starts happening, so you set up a video camera to capture what’s going on. The obvious downside is that we spend a lot of time watching people sleep. This time the activity is visible. That, in and of itself is an improvement. Plus, in this film, I was able to find some fear in what these demons were attempting to do.
HOWE: I will give it some praise though. This is the best one I have yet seen yet (I have only seen two.) The special effects were pretty good. I liked the idea of the old video camera being used to capture what was going on inside the house.
The 3D was pretty useless. I took my glasses off and watched a couple of minutes without them and realized that I didn’t need them. The shots were in focus, so I don’t know what the point of them was.
The best part about the whole movie is its length: 90 minutes.
TAYLOR: They should have done more with the 3D, but what was there was the scariest I’ve ever seen. I wondered at one point what would be in my face next. But the moments were so fleeting that you might blink and miss them. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a stupid horror movie, but it has no gore, no nudity, just evil. I almost liked it, then I hated it. Now looking back, it’s probably the best Activity yet.
– Howe gives Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension 2 shoulders out of 5.
– Taylor gives it 2.5 eviction notices out of 5.
Reel Reviews with Taylor and Howe appears in The Morning Star every Friday and Sunday.
