Paranormal activity; Next of kin
I’ll start by saying that I prefer to see a paranormal activity movie at the movie theatre vs. at home. I always enjoyed the experience better there.
Next of Kin shows how much this genre has change snice the 1st movie. The original just felt raw and amateurish, which did add to the environment of the film. On the other side, we live in a world where far more people know how to make a movie because technology makes it much easier it is now. This also adds to this movie’s environment. The original film feels like a documentary while this latest film feels like a narrative pretending to be a documentary film. Both films are the latter and in 2021 next of kin easily gets away with adding a little more polish than what would have been acceptable for the original.
Is this an extension of the film franchise? Meaning is this a story connected to the original movie or a original story? I feel like it could be the former but I only see all these movies once so I could not say. Either way, it thought the story was pretty good and had a lot of elements that are similar to the overall story arch of the Paranormal activity franchise. I liked that. The possible trivial connections this story may have to the original makes up for it being exclusive to the small screen.
I got the impression that Next of kin is not only furthering the story of Paranormal activity but also furthering the found footage genre it popularized. A lot of the movie is doing the old school format of Paranormal activity (like the recording of the dates). A lot of it I feel I’ve seen in other found footage movies, particularly, I see them paying homage to the film that started it all: the Blair Witch Project, simply in style and substance.
Overall, this one is not nearly as scary as the other ones. Not just because watching a movie like this at home lessons that, but the movie decides on a quicker pace that’s going for thrills over fright.
