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exorcism

High Marks for Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

by Dane Benko

Poster for Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
Poster for Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones poster

Viewer beware, you are entering into the lost land of imagination, after the warmth of Hollywood’s carefully placed and critically lauded hits have faded and you settle down to bed, intending to hit up the cineplexes over the next few weeks for a bit of catch-me-up before all those award shows hit, and upon scanning the listings, have the horrifying misfortune of seeing the new releases.  It has arrived: January, Hollywood’s graveyard of zombie franchises.

And what better to start the toss off into lonely auditoriums than a new spin-off of the wildly successful Paranormal Activity series.  The Marked Ones has all the warning signs of a train wreck: they’ve stopped numbering the iterations, the release was pushed back from the franchise’s annual holding space as the go-to Halloween movie, and except for a couple announced cameos, it’s dropping the lineage of the previous installments in favor of a brand new cast.  You could almost say it was… marked… for failure?

Except I basically had all that written before I’d seen it.  It’s actually a lot of fun, and if you’re getting tired seeing the giants of Hollywood clash over golden figurines, you might as well jump in for the ride.

Helmed by franchise writer Christopher Landon, The Marked Ones follows Jesse and Hector, two best buds recently graduated from high school, staving off boredom in their run-down apartment complex by toying around with the new camera Jesse’s received for graduation.  Between smoking pot and pranking each other, the two manage to start poking their camera into places they don’t belong and end up finding a strange ritual they don’t understand performed by Anna, the old woman downstairs, who they quickly decide must be some bruja.

Which isn’t really enough to distract them from setting off fireworks and other shenanigans, until Carlos the school valedictorian shows up and offs the old lady in a spectacular manner while Jesse notices a strange mark appear on his wrist, not to mention suddenly acquires spectacular abilities of strength and levitation.  Which is all well and good for his YouTube channel until strange noises start upsetting the electronics and his behavior starts to get weird.

Paranormal Activity The Marked Ones screenshot
“Yo Mr. White, what’d you do to my eye?” Oh wait, wrong Jesse.

From there it’s all exorcisms and shaky cam as Jesse and friends venture progressively deeper into lower levels of the bruja’s hellhole and even follow up on trying to find what caused Carlos to go loco.  Ali Rey makes her appearance to provide tie-in and exposition, and the audience tries to tell the characters what not to do as they immediately proceed to do precisely that.

 

However what makes the movie really roll is the friendship between Hector, played by Jorge Diaz, and Jesse, the headlining Andrew Jacobs.  As horror protagonists, they do predictably stupid things, but as Latino teenagers just trying to spend their last summer together and get laid, they’re those really goofy guys you know from that one party we don’t talk about.

 

Like how a good children’s movie will provide some references that will go over the head of the kiddos so that the adults can have a laugh, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones contains enough bumps, screeches, and scratches to keep the 14 year olds on edge while using the same elements of surprise and shock for some rather good slapstack pratfalls and screwball Spanglish.  The found footage style lets the story jump cut and fast forward through all the boring stuff until Hector manages to get the neighborhood gangsters to pull out the big guns (literally) and it’s all Cholos versus Brujas in some empty plastic-and-dust mansion somewhere up in mapped but unmarked gringo territory.

 

It’s worth the price of admission as long as you allow your b-movies to be packaged in a brand name.  The Paranormal Activity series has managed to keep a legitimate cult following from its beginnings as an actually independent breakout hit through its progressively commercial sequels (and prequel), and The Marked Ones indicates that the filmmakers are willing to expand the world and make it playful.

Filed Under: ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, REVIEWS, uncategorized Tagged With: ali rey, andrew jacobs, b movie, bruja, Christopher Landon, exorcism, found footage, franchise, Halloween movie, horror, january releases, jorge diaz, latino, movie, movie review, paranormal activity, paranormal activity 5, paranormal activity the marked ones, review, sequel, spanglish, spin off, the marked ones, youtube

The Last Exorcism Part II: Movie Review

by Ryan Shea

The Last Exorcism Part 2

The Last Exorcism Part II, left off where the first movie ended.  The original film was shot documentary style about a devious evangelical pastor’s job to exorcise a demon from a farm girl.  The original movie is shot through the perspective of the Preacher and his film crew.  Director Daniel Stamm followed the ever popular found footage style of American horror fims.  Louis Sweetzer, the father of the possessed girl, contacts Reverend Cotton Marcus because he believes his innocent daughter, Nell, is possessed.  Turns out Nell is possessed by a demon named Abalam.  And, as movies like these go, Nell/Abalam over power the Reverend and kill him, his crew, and her family.  The movie ends with the camera lying in the woods of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The Last Exorcism Part 2
Movie Poster for the Last Exorcism Part II

The Last Exorcism II, begins with an unidentified couple finding the exorcised Nell in their home, cold and trembling from her time in the woods.  The beginning scene had one “jump” moment but was otherwise uneventful.  Nell (played by Ashley Bell) is examined by a doctor, bathed by a creepy nurse, who cuts a peice of her hair and places it in a pouch, and sent to a half-way house in New Orleans.  The house “father” gives Nell the cross necklace her mother had given her but tells her to decide whether she is a religious person or not.  Nell soon befriends the other girls in the home and gets a job cleaning motel rooms.  Frank Merle, the man who runs the house, helps Nell to deal with the past events of her life, and she decides that the events that took place and the demon were not real.

When all things seem to be going good, Nell has a boyfriend and is socializing well, she is visited by her father.  His presence warns her that the demon still wants her and will do anything for her.  Soon, Nell starts showing signs of procession and all around creepiness.  She is seduced by the demon in her dreams and is followed by strange characters wearing masks.

Nell is scared and ready to get rid of the demon for good, and the creepy nurse from the beginning turns out to be a voo-doo priestess who has been watching over Nell and has a plan to rid her of the demon for good.

The nurse calls in two men who strap her to a table and hook her up to a monitor and begin to “exorcise” the demon for good.  Well, things don’t go according to plan and Nell must choose to die free or accept the demon into her for good.

I won’t give away the ending in case you do decide to go see the movie.  However, I would not recommend wasting your money on this movie.  The movie was boring and not frightening at all.  The acting was comical and the movie dragged on and on and on and on… You get my point!  If you enjoyed the first movie then you might want to catch the second part, but it does not answer any questions or expand on the first film what-so-ever!

Filed Under: BREAKING NEWS, MOVIES, OPINION, REVIEWS Tagged With: abalam, demon, exorcism, horror movie, movie review, posessed, posession, scary movie, the last exorcism, the last exorcism part 2

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