Hello!

• While this is not technically a movie about the Christmas Spirit, it’s set in the snow and I can lump it into my Wintertime Spectacular.

• Blah blah yawn yawn shut my lips already but I don’t care if it’s a sequel or a seventh or even a ninth – I just want to be entertained, even if it’s moderately

• I have no allegiance to the Paranormal Activity movies but I can say that I’ve at least kind of liked them all although I’ve lost track – I don’t remember what number The Ghost Dimension was but I remember it being kind of shit, even for all of the bad horror I watch

• Do people do stupid things in this? yessssssssssssssssssssss what are your expectations?

• Do people go into holes in the ground when YOU SHOULD NEVER GO IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND? yesssssssssssssssssss what are your expectations?

• Does this movie have at least one annoying character that I hoped would just fall out of that house and freeze to death in the snow so he’d finally shut the fuck up?? yesssssss that was my expectation

• SPOILERS mentioned later if you’re going to watch this with no expectations of how this Paranormal Activity movie might jut play out

A girl who looks surprisingly like a girl who fucked another guy while we were dating back in the 90s runs into this Amish guy out on his spring break thing where he can drink and fuck and do whatever he wants. So she just fucks him right there in the swimming pool in front of all of your mutual friends and lets them tell you about it. Granted, they’re restaurant friends so they’re not good for shit in the first place but fucking really? I don’t know if the girl above fucked that guy but he tells her he knows about her mom who dumped her off in front of a hospital however many years ago and how she lived on this farm somewhere across the country and how she got knocked up and probably fucked every dude in town while you were at work trying to make a living at a job that you hated. Maybe – anyway she decides to go meet her ancestors and film everything along the way, probably fucking the entire wait staff for all you know.

Out in Amishtown, the Amish agree to let them film everything and run gas generators to charge all of their electronic devices so they can continue filming shit all over the farm. I’ve never really heard any stories about things like the Amish inviting their neighbors over to watch the Superbowl or how they complain constantly about poor cell service out in their barns but – hey – what do I know? I would like to point out that early on, Mr Blumhouse and his crew make a really cool decision to show just what they can do with their cameras when used properly – will it come back later??? HUH HUH??? I sure hope so!

Imagine this except in super duper slow motion with grass particle and pollens flying all around (it’s really nice!)

SPOILER # 1: Hey! They’re NOT Amish – they’re just a group of folks who live in non electric grid houses and eat by candlelight and air dry their sheets and raise goats and all of that good stuff while trying to contain a demon! Plus! They have a closet full of electricity powering laptops and all of their nationwide security cameras. Apparently this was filmed in New York so, up yours, Con Edison!

Elsewhere, on the farm, that lovable loser who calls COVID masks ‘face diapers’ gets his hair cut by the local farm children.

Later, outside the farm, the girl and her buddies go where they’re not supposed to go – a boarded up church out in the middle of a forest.

Despite being explicitly told by a bearded elder not to go in that building, they do and subsequently desecrate an altar because there might be something under it.

SPOLIER # 2: There is!

SPOLIER # 3: It’s as deep as they fucking get and there’s an old woman living down there! Keeping the demon away! And I think she eats those goats they raise!

SPOLIER # 4: These meddling fucks let the demon escape!

FUCK! Are they setting us up for the big slow motion awesomeness they set up earlier??? Is it coming?? Is it about to pop, honey???

SPOILER # 5: They do! And it lasts for maybe five seconds and it sucks!

SPOILER # 6: It gets out of New York and goes and fucks the entire wait staff in Pennsylvania Dutch Country!

I don’t know about that last one but that’s probably enough of all of that shit.

Honestly, I thought this movie was OK – if our goal is to be entertained then this was entertaining enough. I feel like this could have been a lot better. I think, let’s just go ahead and move on from the ‘footage’ schtick and just use some cameras on tripods. Uncle Blumhouse, you’ve made enough money to start your own production company, I think you can afford and pony up some decent camera stands and even some tracks you can lay on the ground to do some tracking shots. It’s OK, really. I think this could have been better just using a static camera shot technique (or even two!)

FILED UNDER: FILM MIASMA CHRISTMAS CHEER