It's the end of 2013, and by this point we've all been flooded with a deluge of year-end "best of" lists. How sick of them must you be? But fear not! At Judging by the Trailer, there is no best of. There is only Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones - one of the most laughably inept trailers I've seen in quite some time.
And why shouldn't it be laughable? As the fifth installment in that franchise of diminishing returns, Paranormal Activity, The Marked Ones is left to pick up the pieces of a broken genre (found-footage horror) and listlessly toss them out in that cinematic graveyard known as January.
We begin with the exploration of what historians may note as the most fearless amateur cameraman of all time. It's one thing to document every waking moment, as this gentleman seems to do, but when it comes to courageously filming gang violence, breaking and entering and (not to put too fine a point on it) horrifying fucking apparitions, this guy deserves some sort of Egon Spengler medal of bravery. He is an honorary Ghostbuster. He may as well have his own crystal skull-themed brand of vodka.
Things go from bad to worse to SPOOKY when two teenagers break into a murdered old lady's apartment to find it adorned with some variety of voodoo hocus pocus, after which one of the kids finds himself possessed (don't you hate it when that happens?). Gone are the modest days of strapping a video camera to an oscillating fan in the hopes that something might jump out and scare you - this ain't your grandma's found-footage horror. What we have now is essentially a standard narrative with bad cinematography and a mouthy camera operator.
The scariest thing about The Marked Ones, it seems to me, is that anyone with a functioning brain and a tongue they've yet to swallow might find themselves ordering a ticket for this nonsense. Happy New Year!
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