Who’s up for a ripoff movie? I am I am. This movie is, of course, produced by The Asylum. They have been dubbed “mockbusters” by the media since they are low budget direct to video knock offs of big blockbuster hits usually even going the same route as using the same style on the box art. The Asylum produced such classics as:
• I am Omega
• Transmorphers: Fall of Man
• Snakes on a Train
• Sunday School Musical
• Titanic 2
• And this piece of crap I am looking at now.
This movie starts with a 911 call telling you it killed my mom and sister so thanks for the spoiler. Through a title card we read Thomas Finley killed himself in prison after being accuse of the rape and murder of his sister. Well it starts exactly like “Paranormal Activity” Thomas is introducing his Sister Samantha, and his mother Ellen. In exactly the same way Micah does Katie and himself.
So they tell the story about how the patriarch of the family, David dies in a car accident and Ellen was told that she could communicate with the dead by writing to them. Whatever, let’s keep this shit cake baking. So Ellen wakes up one night and starts writing. She doesn’t remember doing so of course but Thomas find the paper crumpled under her pillow and spells out the word MARON.
Thomas sends Samantha and Ellen to stay in a hotel while he deals with the problem. That night he hooks up bells to wire so they will ring when the entity passes by. Eventually this does happen and the entity bangs at his door. When the banging stops he gets a call from his mom that the spirit followed them to the hotel and attacked them at the hotel. Apparently it dragged Samantha off her bed. Too bad we got to see bells ringing and a door being knocked on when we could’ve seen that.
Thomas wakes up and sees the front door open and his sister gone. He goes looking for her and finds her in a trance in her bra and panties. When she wakes she can’t recall being outside or how she got there. Wow Déjà vu. The next night Samantha is found screaming in a bathtub topless, and severely traumatized.
Ellen blames herself for the goings on and slits her wrists. She lives and gets taken to a hospital. A paranormal expert shows up and says Maron is Germanic for Nightmare and the creature that is there is basically an incubus that wants to rape Samantha. The psychic agrees to help and the video goes black.
There is a pause then we see the POV is a shot of the experts bleeding head looking vacantly on the floor Samantha is screaming and Thomas is running up to get to her. Wait, so he stopped to turn on the camera and film a dying man and all this. What an asshole. He sees Samantha naked and bleeding levitating by some invisible force.
The camera focuses on Samantha. Oddly her scratches have completely stopped bleeding. I guess continuity is a privilege not a right. At the end it’s revealed through title card that after hearing about both her children’s death Ellen committed suicide shortly thereafter. The video recording was found in the family attic one year later probably next to a slightly burned picture of a Katie Featherston.
You know at least Micah would film something. There is so much time wasted in this movie filming darkness and random junk. Since it was FOUND footage it was presented to the audience in “Paranormal Activity” sort of like “We had a strange case folks. What can you make of it given what you’re about to see?” This doesn’t have that feel at all. This is presented more like “Is this scary folks? Huh? Is it? Use your imagination. It’s probably something awful.” Given that most of the action happens off screen I’d say they banked on this.
Ok I’ll admit something now I had the biggest crush on Katie Featherston in “Paranormal Activity” and I thought she and Micah had great personalities that made the movie really work and combined with the other elements the movie really came together. This movie has none of those elements.
The characters are horrible Styrofoam cutouts the action happens in the dark or off-screen, the sound quality is awful and I’m pretty sure it gave me a canker sore watching it. Ok that last one is not true but it’s still pretty damn awful. Clearly this movie was made for people who confuse it with the original good movie and are stupid enough to buy this by accident. How these people don’t get the shit sued out of them is beyond me.
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