It's that time of year again — when October rolls past the halfway mark, and all sorts of folk, too old to trick-or-treat but too young to take the kids trick-or-treating, start thirsting for a horror film, much like otherwise teetotalers looking for their St. Patrick's Day drunkening. Crimson Peak, the masterpiece of gothic passion and ghoulish flourishes, is still in theatres. Opening this very weekend, you've got Vin Diesel as The Last Witch Hunter, which looks gloriously deranged and has that amazing Icelandic actor who stole the Walter Mitty remake right out from under Ben Stiller as a nefarious warlock.
And oh yeah, a new Paranormal Activity movie.
But you wouldn't know about the latter if you were going by the traditional exhibitors in the area, and it's all part of what could very well amount to a major shift in distribution strategies, like Steven Soderbergh's Bubble. Or it could just be another would-be experiment that doesn't disrupt too much of the status quo, like Tower Heist. It just happens to have taken what would normally be a Halloween sure thing out of play.
The thing about horror movies is that they usually only play for about two weeks before they're jettisoned out of theaters. Even the really successful ones. There are certainly exceptions to this (look no further than The Visit, still bringing people in after more than a month onscreen). But in general, that particular genre is regarded as front-loaded — meaning it's going to do the majority of its business in its opening weekend, oftentimes on its first day. Horror audiences are devoted and reliable, and their loyalty is something Hollywood has relied upon for decades.
As soon as their attendance drops, however, they're out. Sometimes you will get the occasional title that crosses over to mainstream audiences. But for the most part, you get those two weeks and that's it. So Paramount, which makes and distributes the Paranormal Activity films, decided to try something a little different — namely, releasing the film to Video On Demand and physical-media formats two weeks after the film's theatre count drops below 300 screens.
This goes against the accepted tradition for a 90-day window between theatrical and home video releases. And Regal Cinemas, Carmike and several other national chains, as their policy and prerogative, said, “Absolutely not.” (You can get a more thorough analysis of the situation, with quotes from the involved parties, at the Wall Street Journal.)
A few thoughts/questions come to mind:
1) How would a studio share its digital revenue with exhibitors? I'm assuming this is like the VPF (Virtual Print Fees) that studios pay to subsidize the digital changeover a few years back. But it all seems kind of nebulous.
2) If the big exhibitors are so concerned about the sanctity of the theatrical experience, are they going to take a hard stance against people using their phones in theatres, as well as making sure proper projection and aspect ratio are happening in all of their locations? The Alamo Drafthouse model is a good one.
3) In the independent, foreign film, and specialty market, it's been demonstrated that there can be day-and-date theatrical and VoD releases of a film and still make money on both fronts. So how is this — which keeps exhibition exclusively theatrical for the first three to four weeks of a film's release — a huge threat? And doesn't this also feed into Question #2 a bit? Meaning: If exhibitors find home viewing such a threat, shouldn't they step up their game?
4) I guarantee you a lot of the big exhibitors were looking forward to showing this film, and hate that this whole mess even happened. Because now, in markets like Nashville all over the country, what would be a seasonal sure thing is now something one has to search for elsewhere. I would imagine that a lot of people with cushy offices are annoyed this tiny but reliable tradition of the moviegoing year had to become a battlefield.
So where does that leave those of us who love the tradition of the late October horror film and want to get scared by scanning oft-static frames for impending mayhem? Especially since this latest offering — supposedly the final film in the series according to all the involved higher-ups — uses 3-D?
Thankfully, you've got three options within 50 miles of the Nashville area: the Shady Brook 12 in Columbia, the Stardust Drive-In in Watertown, and the NGC Gallatin 10 in Gallatin — though the latter is the only one of the three offering any shows in 3-D.
Now, for those of y'all who don't like 3-D or cannot perceive it because of ocular or synaptic issues, I understand. But this is different. It's a 3-D film in a series where subtle movements in static tableaux are the payoff to countless sequences. In these movies, the unease of recontextualizing images becomes a visceral task, and mysterious and demonic presences are known for throwing cast members at the camera with no warning. Put another way: 3-D is how you want to see this.
A lot of time has gone by since the Paranormal Activity series was ruling those late October weeks from 2010-2012. Before the PA era, that was the dominion of the CrossFit of horror, the Saw films, which didn't miss an October for seven straight years. But there's a devotion to these films, the ones that come along and resonate in our collective American subconscious to keep us enthralled over the course of several years. What the Marvel Cinematic Universe has perfected is what the Frank Mancuso regime at Paramount came up with in the '80s, when they had a Friday the 13th movie up and ready to go at seemingly every actual Friday the 13th that rolled around.
And if this is the last of the Paranormal Activity films, I'm stoked for whatever the next monstrous film that comes along and scratches our itch for things that go bump in the weeks leading up to Halloween.
So: that was me at the first opening day 3-D show this morning with my buddy Dave, who went with me to every Saw movie on opening day — not because they were good (they weren't), but because it was a tradition. If you love R-rated horror, where else are you going to be?
So here's the thing about Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. It's kind of a quilt. It's definitely made for as wide an audience as possible, because all the scenes are cut to the bone, oftentimes bouncing out a level of reality so someone can explain what would normally take time to get. Things get very metatextual in terms of screens and recordings, but the lack of involvement of Christopher Landon (who had helped shape each of the films since the second one) is very much felt.
The majority of the film, which follows a new family that has moved onto the property where Katie and Kristi's house burned down in 1988 — and who happen upon a badass camcorder that can see into the astral plane (yes, the 3-D is diegetic) — is pretty good. There's material from several of the previous films seen on tape as assorted folk attempt to piece together the mystery, and some minor retconning with a mysterious ponytailed figure prophesizing baroque rituals involving seeing through time and hewing a human form for the demon Tobi.
But there's a very specific moment when things spiral very quickly out of control, when Emily, the new family's designated Mom in danger, starts frantically working her way through all the priests in the Santa Rosa Yellow Pages. From then on, it feels like a completely different movie: undisciplined, shaky-cam-laden, and hell-bent on some giant exorcism/extermination finale that will reveal the physical form of Tobi. It definitely doesn't feel like a Paranormal Activity movie. Disciplined has been the defining adjective for the whole series, using static shots to retrain the ways audiences watch and expect horror. The last reel or so of this offering feels like it was made for people who've only seen the ripoffs of the style that the previous films (especially the third one, which is leaps and bounds the best in the series) perfected, and it feels unlike anything else in the whole series.
Is it worth seeing? Absolutely, and I drove 30-something miles to see it. What works in the film is superb, and the 3-D is used more creatively than in the vast majority of films that are released in that format these days. The acting is par for the course, and the jump scares THUD and WHOOSH and CRUNCH exactly as you'd expect. But the script is quite simply a fucking mess. It seems to be trying to tie up loose ends but instead just flails about. Given how often this film got delayed (and the current brouhaha about release strategy), my guess is that some major reshoots were involved. That would at least explain why the further it goes along, the more it abandons the much more interesting film lurking inside.
Let's hope the physical-media release in a few weeks offers up some extras that can explain what exactly happened here. I'm also doubly interested in next week's release of The Scout's Guide to The Zombie Apocalypse, which finds Landon directing his own horror film. But for now, if you ever were intrigued as to what all the activity was about, you could do worse than spending your 85 minutes in The Ghost Dimension — if you're willing to work for it.
