Let’s watch the series go off the rails.
The fourth entry is the first actual sequel to the original film, which is a somewhat odd thing to think about. This time we are more or less given an entirely new set of characters. That is after we get about a ten-minute recap of the stuff from the last one, so once again the film thinks we are too stupid to keep up.
Spoilers.
This time around we follow teenager Alex after a new family moves in across the street (the now possessed Katie and a young boy named Robbie). Something happens, and Katie is taken to the hospital, so young Robbie stays with Alex, her parents, and her little brother Wyatt.
First, I am sure that police just drop kids off at random houses when the single parent is ill.
The fourth entry follows the same formula, where we watch some high class white people slowly notice something is amiss, and everyone but the one who is haunted ignores it. The characters fall into the pattern I talked about in the review for number three, but this time they are fairly devoid of personality. Alex is okay, but so was Kristi, Katie, and Ali—they all share similar traits, and nothing really distinguishes them. The other characters in this film are perhaps the flimsiest of the series. The parents are unhappy (who knows why?), and they are little more than set dressing for most of it.
We also get more video proof of weird stuff happening and of course no one does anything about it. Alex is almost killed, swears something odd happened, and her parents will not look at the video—they just assume she is now insane. Why bother taping anything! How hard would it be to watch a damn video!
The reasoning for carrying around a camera has become quite thin at this point, and we are pretty much given an entire film via skype. I just don’t see people continuing to hold the camera during a lot of this crap, but that is a downfall of the genre.
The movie isn’t great on a basic level. The scares are lame (one good one for the whole film), the characters are flat, and the idea has worn down to the point of nothing. However, this one does the dumbest thing by completely dicking up the lore.
The cult/coven stuff is probably the most interesting part of the series, but they almost refuse to be consistent with what the rules are for possession. You’d think that Robbie is actually Hunter, nope—Wyatt is Hunter. What this means is that Katie killed Kristi and kidnapped Hunter just to give him up for adoption—which makes absolutely no sense. No matter what the argument is, this idea simply doesn’t add up. Robbie appears to be some sort of conduit for the demon (named Toby here) and works to break down Wyatt into accepting the demon. This is stupid. Stupid!
We are told that the demon is only haunting the bloodline for the first born son, but then it gives up Wyatt for reasons? In an effort to throw a curveball into the film they accidentally blew a runny shit all over the established ideas of the previous films. The first three are rendered pointless here, and we all have to ask if this is an extended exercise in masochism at this point.
I feel bad for the crew on this one. The film is obviously a cynical cash grab by a studio who doesn’t care about the craft so long as money is made. I suppose those involved can be thankful that this film is so shallow and empty that everyone probably already forgot about its existence.
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