Howdy! And Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

...aaaaannnnnddddd we're back!!!!

Aw, I missed you guys too.

It's October 1st which means it's time for the best month of the year. There's pumpkin spiced crap as far as the eye can see, (although I am quite partial to the Autumn Squash Soup at Panera and the Pumpkin Spice Chai at local coffee place Satellite, but that's a story for another blog), there's beer fests every other weekend with the best beer style (Marzens, duh) in abundance, the weather is finally not sweat-your-arse-off hot, and IT'S HALLOW-FRIGGIN-WEEN, which means another year of me over preparing for Trick-r-Treaters and them not showing up and me being pissed. Damn kids don't deserve me...

But most importantly of all, it's time for my annual Horror Binge! Every year, right around the change to September, I start chomping at the bit for horror films and agonize over the fact that I have to wait a month to start. Now give me until the end of October and I won't want to see another horror film until next October because son-of-bsting 31 is too damn many. But I am a sadist like that and like to ruin the things I love with over exposure. I do have this uncanny knack for drilling things into the ground with my love until I can't stand them anymore. What's a sadist to do?

Anywho, this year. I'll try to hit 31, I truly will, but you try being a teacher and watching 31 horror flicks. A pain. A fun pain, but a pain all the same. This year too I got a bit of a surprise a-cookin' so we'll see how that goes until it actually comes to fruition. If it does though it will be all kinds of rad.

Enough of me, imma shut up. Let's get to horror watchin'. Here's to horror and my still as-of-yet intact psyche! Give me until the end of the month...

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

Boy oh boy, did I start this month off with a stinker.

So. allow me to preface this by saying that I loved the first Paranormal Activity (2 and 3 weren't terrible either). I've said it before on this blog, but Paranormal Activity had everything right with found footage horror: the jump scares were organic, the ghost was actually terrifying, and the whole ordeal was surrounded in unexplained mystery. 

The Ghost Dimension takes everything right with the first Paranormal Activity and says, "Hey, what'd it be like if we took all that good stuff and just, like, dumb-ified it to the max by stripping it of any shred of mystery?" Well, the answer is you would have a soulless, color-by-numbers mess of a film that is a 97 minute snooze fest. 

Ghost Dimension takes it's tagline "For the first time you will SEE the activity" way, way too seriously. The main character whose name I don't care enough to look up or remember finds a magical camera that shows the paranormal activity in the form of a badly CGI-ed tar creature thing alà the monster from Ferngully. They do this without realizing that the thing that made the first Paranormal Activity good was it's mystery; what you don't see is far scarier than what you do see. Instead this film (in a mission to finish the series and explain everything I guess?) hands all the scares to you on a silver platter and removes any of the imagination and individuality of the original. 

What we have here is a film that tries so hard to be all the good things in the original but add some extra on top, some sour cream if you will, that ends up overwhelming what was good about the original. Honestly, the only bearable part of the film is the ending. It's reasonably entertaining with demons and such but I wonder if it was simply that I was starved for something, ANYTHING to happen for an hour that the little that did happen at the end felt satisfying. 

This movie is a big, sour cream-y mess that begs the question: did we need a 6th Paranormal Activity?

No. No we did not.

3/10