Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)

The fifth entry in a franchise about people filming their own demises arrives with a modest twist: the setting shifts to Oxnard, California, and the cast is largely Latino. The studio aimed the picture at that market, which constitutes the full extent of its cultural ambition. The characters are Latino because the story happens to be set where Latino families live, not because anyone pauses to reflect on it. Andrew Jacobs plays Jesse, a recent high school graduate who pokes around a dead neighbor's apartment and finds black magic artifacts, VHS tapes, and a journal of spells. His friends Hector and Marisol tag along. The camera shakes. Doors slam. A Simon game becomes a conduit for the underworld. This is the machinery of the subgenre, assembled with competence and no interest whatsoever in themes.

The plot concerns a coven called The Midwives, who brainwash women into surrendering their firstborn sons to build an army of possessed young men. Jesse gets marked, develops levitation and a taste for violence, and the narrative eventually folds back into the ending of the original film, a bit of franchise housekeeping that will delight completists and baffle everyone else. There is no economic critique here, no environmental sermon, no meditation on identity or justice. The antagonist is a demonic witch collective, a villain so refreshingly unburdened by metaphor that the film feels almost quaint. The female characters exist to serve the mythology, which is a functional arrangement, not a statement.

What we have, then, is a found-footage jump-scare picture with modest demographic texture and nothing else on its mind. It opened second to Frozen, grossed ninety-one million on a small budget, and earned a C-minus from audiences who presumably wanted more scares. The whole affair registers as a pleasant, forgettable diversion, a film that asks nothing of its viewers beyond a tolerance for shaky camerawork and sudden noises. In an era of cinema that frequently lectures its audience, this one simply wants to frighten them. It mostly fails, but the restraint is noted.