Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

Paranormal Activity 4 arrives as the fourth entry in a franchise that had, by 2012, refined the cheap scare into an assembly line. The premise is familiar. A suburban Nevada family, a strange child next door, a webcam, an Xbox Kinect pressed into service as a surveillance tool. Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman keep the cameras rolling and the jump cuts coming. The film knows exactly what it is and never apologizes for it. It grossed $143 million on a $5 million budget, which tells us rather more about the audience than the film ever will.

It is, precisely, a machine for startling teenagers. The Nelson family is white, affluent, and unexamined as such. Their money draws no comment. Their whiteness draws no comment. Alex, the teenage protagonist, wields a laptop the way earlier generations wielded a crucifix, and the film treats her competence as a genre requirement, not a statement. There is no LGBTQ subtext, no racial reckoning, no environmental anxiety, no critique of the consumer electronics that clutter every frame. The demon Toby holds no politics. He wants a body, and the screenplay is content to let him have one.

We are left with a rare specimen: a horror sequel that declines every invitation to mean something. It does not lecture. It does not represent. It does not even pretend to. We could call this a failure of ambition, or an honest piece of commerce, and the distinction may not matter. The film made its money, frightened its audience, and moved along, leaving behind only a dedication to an actor who did not live to see the release. There is something almost restful about a picture this free of agenda. The ledger stays blank, and the ledger, for once, is the point. The demon wins, the credits roll, and no one has been improved by the experience. A sommelier might weep. We merely note it and move to the next bottle.

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