Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin
paramount plusWhen Paranormal Activity first came out in the late 2000s, it is safe to say that it reinvented the modern horror genre and gave a new life to the found footage genre in a way undeniably similar to 1999's The Blair Witch Project. Over a decade later and not only has the gimmick slowly been broken down by the Paranormal Activity franchise but also by the horror genre as a whole, which has gravitated to the gimmick and explored it in nearly every perspective imaginable. After a whopping 6-year hiatus, the longest in the franchise's short yet prolific history, Paranormal Activity finally returns with Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin. Ditching the established lore of the franchise and being the first film of the series to release exclusively on streaming, it is clear that Next of Kin hopes to revitalise the long-dead horror franchise but in nearly every way imaginable, the film lets its own ambition down.
Rather than exploring Katie or those close to her, Next of Kin sees documentary filmmaker Margot (Emily Bader) and her team travel to a small secluded Amish community in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic to hopefully learn more about her long-lost mother who belonged to the community. While there, Margot and her team begin to notice various strange occurrences from the community and begin to fear that they have made a mistake, as they fear both living and paranormal threats. For fans of the franchise and outsiders attempting to make their way in for the first time, Next of Kin feels like an incredible misfire with a clear identity crisis at the center of the feature.
Being the 7th film in the franchise, the idea of reinvention is going to be inevitable. A gimmick can only stay interesting for so long, and already, it has started to lose its intrigue. Reinvention is not always a bad thing: Rob Zombie, for example, found a wonderful level of reinvention for the Halloween franchise with Halloween II as did David Gordon Green with his Halloween. The danger with this reinvention however is the threat of alienating the established audience of a franchise that has grown to love a certain idea of what the franchise is. Due to this, many series are scared to change and ultimately fail to truly find reinvention. Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin suffers from this in the worst of ways. Where the film does attempt to change – such as adding a more cinematic approach to its filmmaking, creating a self-contained story, and adding the threat of an isolated community – it ultimately never feels ready to let go of its foundation to a damming degree. There is simply no reason the film is in found footage, with the feature itself breaking away from this style multiple times. The idea of a paranormal threat isn't introduced wildly late into the film's 98-minute runtime and, all around, the film feels unrecognisable as a Paranormal Activity film. Similar in a sense to what The Cloverfield Paradox represented to the Cloverfield franchise, the film largely feels like an original project bogged down by the unnecessary inclusion of an established franchise with the series it belongs to acting almost like a parasite.
Granted, it isn't that Next of Kin's only problem is its identity within the Paranormal Activity franchise. To say the film is compelling or interesting in the slightest would be a complete lie. The movie is incredibly paint-by-numbers, with the plot not making a ton of sense and characters being instantly forgettable. The horror itself is also lackluster with every jumpscare feeling beyond predictable and dull. There is a clear formula with how the jumpscares are framed which audiences will be able to pick up almost immediately which ruins the impact of nearly every scare. The inclusion of the COVID-19 pandemic also needs to be mentioned, as it is obviously tone-deaf and completely unneeded. It only comes up in a single segment towards the opening when the group travels to the community and serves no purpose to the plot or thematic depth of the project. While many are still affected and still dying from COVID-19, to use it as a throwaway piece of a horror film feels incredibly misplaced.
Looking for positives, the only real one that can be found is some of the production design. Leaving the isolation found in the rest of the franchise, Next of Kin is able to create a perfectly fine setting of mysterious wood churches and a seemingly endless forest that, while far from revolutionary, is still overall effective. It also must be said that the film is more watchable than the previous edition in the franchise, titled Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, which might not be saying much but remains a fact when looking at the series overall.
Largely, it is hard to look at Next of Kin as anything but a failure. The film tries to resurrect the clearly dead franchise to grim results. It is painfully boring and predictable with not a single moment of scare truly feeling memorable or effective. Fans of the franchise will feel a disconnect from the franchise's new direction while newcomers will feel put off by the poor execution. It is hard to imagine anyone will feel happy with what Next of Kin delivers, and if this truly is the final nail in the coffin for the Paranormal Activity franchise, it is hard to imagine a more frightening way for it to go.
