Let’s watch the last one.
Despite making eight times its budget at the box office, it seems that the declining returns set this one to be the last one in the series.
The marketing behind Ghost Dimension is perhaps more interesting than the film itself. I remember taglines like “see the activity” and such, which basically translates to “you might actually see something interesting, so please give us a sixth chance to do right by an increasingly weary audience.” The fact that this is the final film was also a major selling point (despite them already talking about rebooting the damn thing). We also had the whole 3D crap shoved in our faces for this one, despite that trend already being fairly dead by 2015.
We follow another oddly wealthy family (and we are still stuck in California) this time around. The family has purchased Kristi and Katie’s childhood home (rebuilt after the fire) and find a camera that can see spiritual activity. Married couple Ryan and Emily start seeing weird stuff around their daughter Leila. Ryan’s brother Mike (I may have flipped the names, but it doesn’t matter) and a houseguest named Skyler who is only there to exposition dump and serve as a sexy lamppost.
The film also introduces time travel (to be fair this is kind of brought in with The Marked Ones), so get ready to deal with that nonsense. For a series that already had an incredibly overwrought lore, adding in time travel just seems a little insane.
The demon Toby wants Leila, and it seems that he wants to bring her back in time to when Katie and Kristi had just been captured by the cult. Why the time travel doesn’t make a lot of sense, and while the film does add in some cool stuff via the past interacting with the present, these scares aren’t worth the undoing of the lore.
So how is the film? It is fine. We get the same stuff that we have had in all of them. The scares lack a bit of bite, but they have since the first entry.
The characters are stupid, again. Why you would continue to let your daughter sleep in a room where you know a demon is visiting is beyond me. A lot of people seem to think this is the worst one in the series—I’m not sure I agree. 2 and 4 were also quite problematic, and I think this one seems worse because of fatigue more than anything inherent to it.
I think the most annoying thing about this movie is that despite it being advertised as the final chapter, nothing is really concluded. To be fair, I have no idea how they could conclude it with all of the inconsistencies and such, but they could have tried.
If you like the other ones you will probably find this one okay. I didn’t hate it as much as everyone else seems to. Its fine, I guess, and that is about the best I can say for any of the sequels— “they’re fine.” Entertaining enough for a watch if you like this type of horror. Absolutely nothing special.
With the inevitable reboot coming, let’s hope the move away from found footage.
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