Terrifyingly repetitive Activity

FILM REVIEW

Paranormal Activity 4
DIRECTED BY: Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost
STARRING: Kathryn Newton, Matt Shively, Aiden Lovekamp, Brady Allen
CERT: 15A

Paranormal Activity 3 was the origin story of the series and it left off with young Katie and her sister in the care of grandma and her coven of witches. As we know from the previous films, Toby the supernatural Terminator followed the girls to adulthood and, chronologically speaking, Katie was last seen murdering her family before disappearing into the California sunset with her infant nephew, Hunter, under her arm.
They haven’t been seen since, but in neighbouring Nevada, strange things are happening to a new family. Strange but tiresomely familiar things.
Teenager Alex (Kathryn Newton) is creeped out by the kid who’s just moved in across the street and made friends with her young brother Wyatt (Lovekamp). Robbie (Allen) is a tad on the strange side, an oddly quiet chap with a creepy habit of turning up out of nowhere. When his single mother is taken to hospital and Robbie moves in for a while with his new buddy’s family, things get a bit more lively around the house. Especially at night.
So in the grand old tradition, Alex sets up surveillance, with the help of her boyfriend Ben (Shively). I’m not saying that Ben is an annoying little twerp, but within five minutes of the opening credits I was hoping he would be the first to meet his demise and that with any luck there would be some kind of terrible torture involved.
This time around, the familiar technology of webcams and mobile phones is utilized to capture the footage. The kids even make use of a night-vision feature on X-Box Kinect to record what happens in the living room, making for an excellent star-field effect. For tension, it’s not quite as ingenious as the simple oscillating fan in PA3, but it has its unsettling moments.
The parents in this little clan are wrapped up in their own problems and so they’re a bit detached from the action though Holly (Alexondra Lee) has an encounter with a disappearing knife and Doug (Stephen Dunham) gets to see a pretty strange webcam recording.
“Awesome,” he declares, then instantly forgets it. Though it’s even more strange that his daughter and her idiot boyfriend seem to instantly forget it, too. Because just when things get interesting around the house when all the more obvious action is being captured on camera,­ these two clowns stop watching the recorded footage. Now why would they do that?
And while we’re asking, if a virgin sacrifice is necessary to assist in the possession of a soul, what happened in the bath? Can a demon occupy more than one person at a time,­ while simultaneously existing as a tiny ghost, starring in his own Kinect show? Was everybody here just making it up as they went along?
Maybe all will be revealed in PA5, which is underway as we speak. But, from the evidence here, directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost ­and regular series screenwriter Christopher Landon ­seem to have run out of ideas.
They can still pull off a good jump scare, but they don’t do anything here that we haven’t seen before. Creepy kids, imaginary friends, strange drawings, mysterious noises, shifting furniture, moving duvets and mock frights. We’ve been down this road a few times too many at this stage.
Their lack of imagination is even more obvious when they pay homage to classics like The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby or when they lift a scene straight from The Shining, where the kid scoots around on his Big Wheel. It’s a nice touch, but a lazy one, a fairly clear sign that these guys don’t have much more up their sleeve.
But I’m hoping they do.

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted
DIRECTED BY: Eric Darnell
VOICES: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen
CERT: G

The Madagascar series has been a big success for DreamWorks and more importantly for young audiences, the quality has been consistently good. In this third instalment, there’s a tendency towards frantic action rather than genuine laughs, but the movie is still good fun.
Alex the lion (Stiller), Marty the zebra (Rock), Gloria the hippo (Pinkett Smith) and Melman the giraffe (Scwimmer) are longing to be back in the zoo, as any animal in his right mind would be, after having a whale of a time in the wilds of Madgascar and Africa.
But there’s no sign of that plane to New York, so the lads take off for Monte Carlo after the penguins and end up crossing swords with monstrous animal control chief Captin Dubois (Frances McDormand). They escape by stowing away on a circus train, on a trip that takes them through Rome, the Alps and London, where the troupe puts on a dazzling stunt and laser show to a Katy Perry soundtrack. It’s one of those rare occasions when 3D is actually worth it.
Back at Central Park Zoo, the lads wonder if perhaps they were in their right minds after all, making this journey home. But at least they’re safe. Or so they think.
The grown-ups will find this is not as funny as its predecessors, that all the manic action and incessant, extremely loud yakking gets annoying. But the animation is excellent, the characters are strong and there is the odd good laugh. The younger kids should love it.