Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin

Having little to do with the larger franchise, this tired, unsurprising found-footage horror movie is competently made and has its moments, but the characters are often one step behind viewers. Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin develops some likable characters -- especially the towering goofball Dale -- despite some things being frustratingly underwritten (by Christopher Landon, who wrote or co-wrote 5 of the 7 movies in the Paranormal franchise). Are Margot and Chris romantic partners or friends? (They seem like both.) And no one ever explains how Samuel is related to Margot (is he her uncle?) or how the other characters might be.

With Margot poking her nose into every place on the farm trying to dig up information, the movie ends up taking quite a while to get to the scares. It's even possible to forget for awhile that it's a horror movie. When the spooky stuff does get going, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin doesn't work up much energy. For one thing, the characters seem slow to catch on to the mysterious happenings, pushing further into danger when they should be keeping their guard up and responding to alarm bells. (The whole setup is somewhat obvious, truthfully.) For another, characters are forever carrying their cameras into situations where it would have been better to leave them behind. If anyone ever gets an idea to make an eighth Paranormal Activity film, perhaps that's where the cameras ought to be left.