Cult-Movie Review: Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

The Paranormal Activity found-footage franchise returns with The Marked Ones (2014), a solid horror movie that matches  the saga’s high-water mark, Paranormal Activity 3 (2011). 

Another way to look at it is simply this: The Marked Ones is worlds better than the dreadful Paranormal Activity 4 (2012), which I feared was a franchise killer.

The Marked Ones succeeds most notably for two reasons.

The first is the franchise’s welcome change in venue.

The filmmakers have determinedly moved away from wealthy Californian suburbia -- the land of the McMansions and previous franchise entries -- and focused instead on characters at the bottom of the economic ladder, in Oxnard.

Secondly, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones is able to craft a central metaphor that thoughtfully connects the spiritual problem that the characters face with the economic reality of their everyday lives. 

In very real ways -- ones having nothing whatsoever to do with the paranormal -- the Hispanic men of the film might be described as “the marked ones.”  Their skin color, their ethnicity, and their economic status seem to have doomed them to a particular and unpleasant fate. 

From the film’s opening sequence at a high school graduation ceremony to its revelation about how certain individuals are being exploited by unseen forces, The Marked Ones hints at the way that certain people -- or even a whole class of people --– are born to serve another demographic, whether demonic or the ultra-wealthy.

Buttressed by a surprising (and uncharacteristic for the franchise…) sense of humor, a creepy sequence involving the old Milton Bradley toy SIMON, and some nice little nods to other found-footage franchises, The Marked Ones feels positively original, and thus vibrant.

If this movie is any example, then there’s new life and fresh blood left in the franchise.

“Is there something you want from me?”

In the summer of 2012, in Oxnard, a recent high-school graduate named Jesse Arista (Andrew Jacobs) becomes convinced that the woman, Anna (Gloria Sandoval) in the apartment below his is actually a witch. 

With the help of his friend, Hector (Jorge Diaz), Jesse uses a camera – and a vent shaft – to learn more about her.

When Anna is discovered dead in her apartment, however, the mystery deepens, and Jesse, Hector and their friend Marisol (Gabriel Walsh) search the premises for an explanation. They find video-tapes relating to Katie and Kristi, and also a journal which describes strange occult passages or doorways to unholy realms. 

One day, Jesse awakens with what looks like a bite-mark on his arm, and soon he becomes convinced that some kind of supernatural entity -- which speaks to him through an old SIMON toy -- is protecting him for some dark purpose.

Hector and Marisol grow concerned as Jesse grows more alienated and isolated, and his strange powers seem only to grow…

“Are you my guardian angel? Are you…good?”

In Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, a group of poor Hispanic kids -- including the high school valedictorian -- learn the hard way that Dark Forces they can’t control have actually owned them since birth.

This information has not really been made clear to them before their eighteenth birthdays, however. That’s the exact time when the Dark Forces take “ownership” of their lives.

Importantly, the description above explains both the supernatural entities attempting to “possess” the boys’ bodies in the film, and the economic forces seeking to control their destiny.

The Marked Ones is clever enough to nod -- or perhaps wink -- at the similarities between fictional and real life dark forces. 

In short, these young men will not emerge from high school as winners in the job market -- even if they have excelled in their studies (like Oscar…) -- because the deck is stacked against them.

And much like Jesse, many of them will grow alienated and angry when they realize that the gospel of economic freedom was but an illusion.  It was never theirs to have at all, but they didn’t realize that fact until they left the cocoon of school and had to seek their own economic independence. 

And when does that usually happen?

Around one’s eighteenth birthday, of course. 

Welcome to adulthood...

Soon, however, these young men in the film understand the dark truth all too well: it has been pre-ordained since their birth that they will live within certain…limitations, and under the thumb of certain…well, masters.

If you read my movie reviews with any regularity, you know that I view the best horror films as the ones that transmit subversive social messages based on the condition of the larger culture, or guided by the national zeitgeist.

 The Marked Ones conforms to this philosophy, and expresses deeper meaning well-beyond the requisite supernatural hijinks.

Indeed, this 2014 film expertly mirrors our current national climate of economic inequality.  But in this case, it compares the demons that mark their prey explicitly with an entrenched status quo that doesn’t afford genuine opportunity to those at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

You don’t have to worry if you don’t like this sort of thing: the populist message isn’t rammed down your throat.   

But the metaphor about real life is nonetheless there to acknowledge, diagram, and appreciate, and it lends this horror film a kind of depth and value that no other film in the Paranormal Activity franchise really offers.

On a similar note, there have been relatively few horror films that I can recall -- at least off the top of my head -- that feature the Hispanic community and Hispanic characters to the degree that The Marked Ones does.  Delightfully, the new setting and new demographics enliven the proceedings. 

To my surprise, what I actually found the most charming about the film is Hector and Jesse’s sense of humor.  There’s one funny scene here that involves YouTube and the (negative…) commenters who post there, and another amusing scene involving a nude woman in Anna’s apartment.

The film’s characters are not treated with kid-gloves, or in terms of clichés and tropes.  Instead, they are smart, funny kids who get tangled up in something awful, and learn a terrible truth.  They are recognizable as distinctive individuals, and thus seem very real.

At this point, in fact, Jesse, Hector and Marisol are actually the most individual, well-developed, and recognizably human characters that we have met in the Paranormal Activity saga, a fact which makes the conclusion of this film all the more suspenseful, and terrifying.

The film’s director, Christopher Landon, also demonstrates patience, and allows his scenes to build and build.  For example, the sequence featuring the SIMON toy starts out funny, grows increasingly uncomfortable, and ends in ways downright disturbing. 

There’s a nice economy about the horror here, as well.  Three characters sit around an electronic toy, and it “speaks” to them in green (“yes”) and red (“no”) answers.  We’ve seen Ouija Board  or Spirit Board scenes like this one in many movies of recent vintage (including Grave Encounters 2 [2012]), but the use of the SIMON toy renders the scene marvelously original here, and therefore a bit unpredictable and discomforting

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones also casts a relatively wide net in terms of its creative influences. The sub-plots involving doors through time-and-space mirror similar concepts in The Devil’s Pass (2013) and the aforementioned Grave Encounters 2. And the scenes featuring Jesse developing his amazing “powers” with enthusiasm and astonishment similarly recall Chronicle (2012). There are even some touches involving old videotapes that hark back to the V/H/S saga. 

Without outright imitating any of these films, The Marked One proves a decent pastiche of all of them.

The Marked Ones also eschews the bread-and-butter of the Paranormal Activity films: those long, lingering, silent shots of empty McMansion rooms, where audiences are asked to notice some small object moving of its own volition, or something else “paranormal” occurring.

It’s just as well that the series dispatches this wow-tired technique, because it was overplayed and not-always effective in Paranormal Activity 4.  Now, if the next Paranormal Activity returns to the same idea, at least we’ll have had something of a break from it.

The Marked Ones exceeded my expectations, and is a smart, crafty little found-footage film that breathes new life into a franchise that was, frankly, running on empty. 

History, perhaps, will judge if the film emerges at the top or near top of its sub-genre, but for the moment, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones does more than merely mark time.  This sequel actually innovates and surprises at every turn, and the greatest surprise may just be the film’s unexpected wit.

I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that the Paranormal Activity films were mainstream versions -- dumbed-down for the masses -- of The Blair Witch Project (1999). The Marked Ones defies that description. If not necessarily the scariest of the franchise films, this sequel is undeniably the smartest.