Horror Showdown: Sinister vs. Paranormal Activity 4

In the weird cinematic twilight between summer blockbuster season and winter awards season, theaters are full of a smorgasbord of movie options.  This year, we've been treated to a few potential Oscar winners (Argo, The Master), a time travel action-drama (Looper), and an adaptation of a beloved young adult novel (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) - not a bad line-up for a season that is often a veritable question mark.

But as is usually the case, there has been a constant stream of horror and quasi-horror pictures leading up to Halloween.  Kids have been able to get in on the fun with ParaNorman, Hotel Transylvania, and Frankenweenie.  Video game fans (presumably) got the next chapters in game-to-screen survival horror franchises Resident Evil and Silent Hill.  And there have been a slew of more straightforward horror flicks, such as House at the End of the Street, The Possession, and The Apparition.

Currently, two major horror movies are vying for your screams (and more importantly, your box office dollars).  Sinister and Paranormal Activity 4 go about their scary business in very different ways, but there are some similarities that at least partially justify the arbitrary categories in which I will force them to compete, before declaring a winner that ought to go in your queue for Halloween.

Found Footage
When Paranormal Activity hit theaters three years ago, it helped usher in a new era of found footage horror (and found footage movies in general), hearkening back to the smash that was The Blair Witch Project.  The fourth entry is doing much the same old song-and-dance that fans of the franchise have become so well-versed in, although it mixes things up a bit, namely in the nature of the cameras.  Rather than relying on security camera footage or self-rigged cameras, Paranormal Activity is catching up with modern technology, relying on ever-recording webcams and, in a really awkward bit of product placement, the night vision-equipped Kinect, which drenches the living room with tiny green motion tracker dots, which are admittedly used for some creepy moments.

The webcam device works well, especially since the masterminds this time around are a couple of tech-savvy teens, although the plethora of laptops at their disposal is a bit laughable (seriously, the six year-old has a Mac?), but none of the camerawork is as interesting or scary as, say, the fan-mounted camera that provided some of the most tense moments in Paranormal Activity 3, which remains the scariest outing yet.  Things get mobile when Alex (Kathryn Newton) carries her computer around or films using her phone, but the footage, on the whole, isn't as gripping as what has comprised the series up to this point.

Sinister, on the other hand, centers its plot on found footage.  Crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) movies his family to the scene of a horrific crime, where he uncovers a box of truly disturbing home movies in the attic.  The reels of Super 8 film and the accompanying projector serve to pay homage to the found footage subgenre but showing what happens when someone finds it, while reveling in the danger of the disturbing image (in some ways, the film operates along lines similar to The Ring).  The graininess of the footage and the click of the projector make for some creepy visual and aural cues, and with each new discovery as Oswalt examines the footage, the horror elevates and crosses that fine line into terror.  The interplay between the "real world" and the filmed image is truly terrifying, and well-constructed.

Winner: Though Paranormal Activity has built its name on the found footage conceit, Sinister uses the concept in a more visceral, effective way.

Creepy Kids
One of my favorite tropes in the horror genre is that of the creepy kid, whether it's a doll-like beauty or a deranged zombie baby.  Kids are weird to begin with, uncanny in their obvious humanity but lack of social skills or understanding, and when they're dripping with blood or crawling on the walls, things get considerably scarier.

Creepy kids have been put to good use in the Paranormal Activity series before, especially in PA3, and the kids here don't disappoint.  Brady Allen plays Robbie, a now-you-see-him-now-you-don't neighbor who has a hard time staying in bed and seems to be working for demons.  Robbie's wide eyes, naturalistic delivery, and blank stares mark him as a strangely threatening presence, despite his small stature and apparent lack of power.  Even more impressive is Aiden Lovekamp as Wyatt, Alex's adopted younger brother who starts to question his identity after spending time with Robbie.  Wyatt is the target of much of the demonic force's interference, and Lovekamp plays each beat with surprising ability.  It's likely he'll feature into the inevitable fifth chapter (which we'll get to), and I'm excited to see more of this talented young actor.

Sinister's focus on creepy kids isn't immediately apparent; the kids are, from the outset, key to the plot because of their absence.  As the underlying mythology the film is drawing from becomes clearer, so does the kids' importance to the story, and they start to crop up in some chilling slow-motion, shadow-drenched shots.  The make-up is heavy-handed but works, if only because of their connection to the supernatural force at work.

On the not-undead side of things, Oswalt has two kids who contribute to the scares, as well.  Michael Hall D'Addario plays Trevor, whose night terrors leave him in strange places (resulting in some of the easier, jump-out-of-your-seat scares), and Clare Foley plays Ashley, an artistic spirit who starts to experience some of the otherworldly hijinks herself.  Ashley takes on heightened importance in the film's final act, and Foley does a nice job of making her transformation unnerving.

Winner: Sinister has a slight edge here, thanks to the multiplicity of creepy kids, the make-up, and a twist toward the film's end that shows just how scary these kids are.

Sequel Potential
With each of the first three Paranormal Activity movies, there has been a mostly self-contained story that also builds into the larger mythology.  Paranormal Activity 4 throws that structure out the window, instead presenting a half-baked tale that ends so suddenly, so without explanation, that it feels like the filmmakers decided to split a larger film in half, a la every young adult book series finale adaptation in recent years.  Questions are raised that are barely answered, if at all, and the connections to the second film, which are hinted at by a brief recap at the film's beginning, are only loosely established by the time the credits roll.  A post-credits scene only complicates things further, without any sense of resolution.

What's especially frustrating is that the film doesn't leave the door open for just one sequel, but two.  There will likely be a film that picks up after the fourth, explaining what's going on with the final, disturbing, and extremely sudden image, and another sequel/prequel that fills in what happened between PA2 and PA4, because something clearly did.  It's the sort of future money-grab that makes the film feel cheap, which is especially annoying after three solid entries that never felt like manufactured products.

Sinister, as a pretty successful horror film (critically and commercially), is probably going to get a sequel down the road, and it'll make sense, though the film by no means requires one.  It's clear that the horrific events of the film are likely, even certainly, going to continue, but the story is wrapped up nicely, and if there's never a Sinister 2, audiences won't feel cheated out of a movie they needed to see to make sense of what they saw.  It works as a standalone horror flick or as a first chapter in a franchise (that would likely wear out its welcome within three films).

Winner: Winning this round is sort of like winning a diarrhea contest.  Paranormal Activity 4 has much more sequel potential, and it's likely that Paramount is already planning the fifth entry for this time next year.

Is It Scary?
This is probably the most important issue to discuss when having a horror showdown, since audiences don't usually pick this genre for its complex themes and original narratives.  Even if such bragging points are present, they're likely to be forgotten in the recounting of especially scary moments.

Paranormal Activity 4 doesn't manage many scares.  After the horror of the third entry (the first time I've ever cried from being scared by a movie), I knew I needed to keep my expectations in check.  With attractive teens using webcams to document their creepy neighbor kid, I didn't expect the scares to be on the same level as PA4's predecessors.  But even so, I was disappointed by how ineffective some of the scares were.

The most notable misstep is having some of the scares happen in broad daylight.  Weird things can happen anytime and cause chills, but having two supporting characters dispatched in a sunlit house just isn't that scary; the murders feel like they came from the wrong genre.  Luckily, the finale unfolds at night, with shaky night-vision phone camera photography, and the sequence works really well, even if it ends on a big WTF moment.  The use of off-screen sound and bodies being dragged around has been done many times before, especially in this series, but there are still some chills in them.

There's much more than a few chills in Sinister, which veers from PA4 by establishing an atmosphere of dread and danger, rather than settling for pop-up scares.  The grainy found footage, the creepy kids, the unraveling mystery of an apparent serial murderer, and the horrific figure that keeps appearing in the footage all work together to create a film that is always scary, but not always in the same ways.  It's a textured horror film that isn't satisfied with just getting under your skin; it wants to affect you on every level, and by and large, it succeeds.

Winner: Sinister is pretty relentless in its ambience, which is perfect for filmgoers who like watching their horror from the edge of their seats.


It's perhaps obvious by this point, but the overall winner is Sinister, the rare modern horror movie that manages to be really scary and doesn't set its sights on an endless parade of sequels.  Paranormal Activity 4 is mediocre, which is better than a lot of horror today, but its great predecessors, it just doesn't cut it.  Hopefully the inevitable Paranormal Activity 5 can get the series back on track, but for now, check out Sinister to get your seasonal, cinematic scares.