Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

THIS Paranormal Activity spin-off is simply content to spin its wheels, rather than make tracks in any radical new direction.

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. Picture: AP/Paramount Pictures

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY [MA15+]

Rating: 2 stars

Director: Christopher Landon (Burning Palms)

Starring: Andrew Jacobs, Jorge Diaz, Gloria Sandoval

This Paranormal Activity spin-off is simply content to spin its wheels, rather than make tracks in any radical new direction.

Fair enough. Since its first shaky-cam shudder in 2007, little found-footage-franchise-that-could has already grossed over half-a-billion bucks worldwide.

When you have a licence to print money, there's no need
to suddenly go and change
the typeface.

Therefore, any differences to be found in The Marked Ones are not so much cosmetic
as ethnic.

Studio research in the US determined that the Paranormal Activity movies were wildly popular with the urban Latino demographic. So it makes good sense to point an instalment directly at the market. Doesn't quite make for a good movie, though.

While there is claustrophobia and creepy happenings aplenty to be found in the fresh setting of The Marked Ones - a tiny tenement block for Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles - the scares, jolts and "behind you!" moments are as stale as those in the disappointing Paranormal Activity 4.

The plot starts out as a mild murder mystery of sorts. The grumpy woman who lives downstairs has been murdered by a local teen known to best buds Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) and Hector (Jorge Diaz).

They figure it might be a good idea to whip out the camcorder and sneak inside the victim's abandoned apartment.

There are doors in the floor, spooky trinkets lying about everywhere and, as luck would have it, no electricity.

Soon enough, Jesse is possessed by an evil spirit that communicates through an '80s computer game, and the final-act formula that has propelled every Paranormal Activity so far kicks in exactly when it should.

Aside from an amusing interlude where local gangsters fire their favourite shotguns at the evil in their midst, the good, gross, gut-wrenching stuff is in mighty short supply by the end.