![]() There's also a box filled with items that will be ominously familiar to loyal PA followers. Down in the basement to which Jesse and Hector are inevitably drawn after breaking in, they find flickering candles, walls filled with eerie symbols, furniture spattered with blood. The downstairs apartment belongs to an old woman who's said to be a bruja, or witch. Two of the teens, Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) and Hector (Jorge Diaz), take an immediate interest: "Let's go check that shit out!" Naturally, they bring along a video camera for our benefit. The action is a little slow getting started, but before long strange sounds -shrieks and moans-are heard from an adjacent apartment. It begins with a family celebration for a group of students who've just graduated high school. The story is set in Oxnard, California, this time. ![]() (One of the characters wears a t-shirt announcing "I just look illegal.") Despite the movie's ethnic slant, though, there's no need to be Hispanic to be creeped out by it. Apart from offering more action (and a brief flash of full-frontal female nudity), this is the first PA movie to be aimed directly at Hispanic-American horror fans, a growingly important segment of the fright-flick audience. And while you'll be happy to know that's not entirely the case, the picture does have some fresh elements. The Marked Ones is being promoted as a side-trip for the series, possibly the beginning of a spin-off franchise. How many things are more predictable?Īnd yet, these movies are scary, the latest no less than its four predecessors. You know the drill: the low-budget haunting, the little-known actors, the now-hoary "found footage" gimmick. The movie has a final 15 minutes of jolt scares that, while nominally tie into the series' overall mythology, suggest the producers were determined to burn their minimal special effects budget in a hurry.Another year, another Paranormal Activity movie. Since there's no point in calling the police ("They'd never believe us"), the kids take matters into their own hands. Later, the teens consult their own occult expert, a pretty young woman (Molly Ephraim from Paranormal Activity 2) who provides them with lots of witch coven back story and a warning that Jesse's soul is in dire danger. Jesse's grandmother heads to the local Santeria priest for some advice. After Jesse wakes up with a bite mark on his arm and the chihuahua starts to freak out, everyone starts to worry. Later, Jesse and Hector sneak into the dead woman's creepy apartment with its surgical instruments, inexplicable nursery, and a collection of old VHS tapes. One night, Anna gets murdered, apparently by the clean-cut class valedictorian, Oscar (Carlos Pratts), who the boys film running from the crime scene. One of the neighbours is an ill-tempered middle-aged woman, Anna (Gloria Sandoval) living in an apartment in the complex, who everyone calls a "bruja" (witch), which, judging by Jesse and Hector's spying, seems to be accurate. He spends the summer hanging with his friend, Hector (Jorge Diaz, the likeable breakout star here), and Jesse's sister, Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh), hitting the parties, getting chased by gangbangers and trying to spy on their neighbours with the new camera. Jesse (Andrew Jacobs), gets a video camera for a present. The immigrant aspiration message is captured in the opening scene – graduation day in a Los Angeles suburban Latino community. ![]() On the minus side, this is a step down in filmmaking innovation, dropping the static security-cam aesthetic for a sloppy shaky-cam approach, choppily edited to resemble a series of YouTube uploads. The Marked Ones brings some fresh humour and a working-class milieu, and at slightly more than 80 minutes, doesn't overstay its welcome. The Marked Ones is directed by Christopher Landon (son of actor Michael Landon) who wrote all the Paranormal Activity movies after its debut. Specifically, The Marked Ones is a Hispanic cousin, customized for Latino audiences in the United States where the series is particularly popular. Instead, this entry has been described as a "cousin" to the other movies. Although Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is the fifth film in the low-budget, lucrative Paranormal Activity horror series, it is not to be confused with Paranormal Activity 5: That blessed event won't occur until October of this year. ![]()
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