The underlying explanation for what is going on makes less sense the more you think about it, but as the shock tactics continue in the film’s final 30 minutes, The Marked Ones is revealed as a follow-up to one of the earlier sequels in particular while also managing to create what could be an alternate timeline for the entire series.
The marked ones series#
We have to wonder if writer/director Christopher Landon (who wrote the three previous Paranormal Activity sequels) was given a mandate to incorporate a Chronicle-type plot element based on that film’s success.īy this movie’s third act, however, that story point has been dropped as well and Landon begins an escalating series of set pieces, pausing only for some helpful exposition that arrives via a character from one of the previous films. Without getting too deeply into spoiler territory, let’s just say that the entity haunting Jesse at first appears to not just protect him but give him unforeseen powers.
The marked ones movie#
Thankfully, the whole “setting up cameras around the house” format of the other films is largely absent, but oddly, the middle portion of the movie seems to borrow heavily from another “found footage” success story: 2012’s Chronicle. And when Jesse wakes up the following morning, he finds strange marks on his arm which indicate that something lurking in the old woman’s apartment is now coming after him.
Jesse, Hector, and Marisol end up investigating the woman’s apartment, finding evidence that she practices black magic as well as objects that connect her – not that the teens know this – to the other Paranormal Activity movies.
Jesse initially spends the first few days of the summer break playing with his new digital camera, through which we view all of the action, which consists largely of him and Hector trying to make fools of each other.īut things take a darker turn when the mysterious “crazy lady” who also lives in a downstairs apartment, Anna (Gloria Sandoval), is found murdered – and all signs point to the valedictorian of Jesse’s class, Oscar (Carlos Pratts). Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones begins with the high school graduation of Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) an affable young man who lives with his father, sister, and grandmother and spends his time hanging out with his clownish pal Hector (Jorge Diaz) and downstairs neighbor Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh). The result is a film that is undeniably effective in places, yet begins to get bogged down by the same wearying issues that have plagued the series’ more recent entries. Handsome, tough-as-hobnail boots Truckie, and ex-lag, trying to go straight Don Mason (William Lucas) has his altogether noble attempts to make a new start for himself brusquely thwarted by a savage back-alley beating by burly thugs unknown, this violent altercation heralds an increasingly frantic series of threatening events, Don's estranged wife Kay (Zena Walker), and innocent young daughter being inexorably drawn into the toxic miasma of the underworld, as, sadly, Don's foolhardy past dalliances with crime are proving increasingly hard to avoid! 'The Marked one' is a consistently engaging, competently-made, brightly acted, flint-edged B-Thriller a lean, well-sprung, moodily photographed monochrome marvel from the sin-slinging Britain of the 1960s, with the delightfully appealing, blonde-haired actor William Lukas energetically making for a compellingly twin-fisted anti-hero in his desperate, adrenalized rush to make good.The more things change, the more they definitely stay the same in Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, an offshoot of the popular horror franchise that moves the action from the suburban homes of the first four films to a gritty Latino neighborhood in Oxnard, California, while still employing the “found footage” esthetic and mixed bag of scare tactics that are the trademarks of the rest of the series. Veteran director Francis Searle equips himself very well in his fabulously terse crime thriller 'The Marked One' in one of the more actively thrilling, under-documented British crime B-pictures of the 1960s.
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