Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)

Six films into a franchise built on the premise that a suburban family will keep filming a demon instead of leaving the house, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension arrives with the weary obligation of a contractual final chapter, though a seventh installment would later prove the contract had no end. Gregory Plotkin, promoted from the editing bay, directs his debut with professional competence and no discernible appetite. A family in Santa Rosa finds a box of VHS tapes and a camera that renders the invisible visible, and then the usual business follows: doors, sheets, a child who speaks to something in the corner.

The film's cultural footprint is essentially nonexistent, and this is not a complaint. There is no sermon here, no corrective impulse, no attempt to instruct the audience on how to live. The cast is white, the suburb is white, the coven is white, and nobody pauses to remark on any of it. The demon Tobi wants a girl's blood to complete a transformation, which is a plot device and not a metaphor for anything. When the priest is dragged away mid-prayer, the film is doing the only thing it has ever wanted to do, which is to make a room feel wrong.

What remains is a work of pure mechanism, and mechanism has its own dignity. The 3D effects, the lo-fi camcorder grain, the Christmas lights that flicker on cue: these are the tools of a haunted-house ride, and the ride is short. Critics were unkind, audiences shrugged, and the box office confirmed that the market had tired of the format. None of this constitutes a moral failing. It constitutes a sequel. The film asks nothing of us except our nerves, and it does not even ask for those very loudly.