Unlike the first four movies in this franchise, The Marked Ones doesn't follow the Kristi and Katie saga, although several references to the other films are made throughout the course of the movie.
Instead, the movie focuses on Jesse, a recent high school graduate who lives with his father, sister, and grandmother. He and his friends Hector and Marisol become interested in the murder of his neighbor, a woman popularly believed to be a witch, by the valedictorian of his batch. They learn that the victim, Anna, was a member of a coven of midwives who deal with demons. And slowly but surely, things get crazier and crazier for Jesse and his friends.
Now, if you're not a huge fan of the franchise, it'll be easier to miss the easter eggs planted all throughout the movie, which is a shame since they provide the only real "aha!" moments of the film.
There are a few things to be expected in a horror flick of this type: (1) a seemingly innocuous start with a buildup of strangeness and creepiness; (2) an extended period of heightened tension in which the viewers are half sure they want to either exit the room screaming or close their eyes and ears to what's happening onscreen and yet also unable to look away because they just have to know what comes next; (3) an eventual explanation of the mystery and creepiness, although often this happens after the main characters have all been doomed one way or another; and (4) a lingering sense of unease even after the credits have finished rolling.
Unfortunately, The Marked Ones delivered only that first item on my list, and it spent perhaps half of the movie doing it. The trio of teenagers who are the main characters of the film seem like perfect cliches for your typical slasher flick, and by the time they start to get to the bottom of all the weird things going on, the audience has probably already guessed it all.
Rather than the oppressive feeling of dread and anticipation, you get cheap thrills of the "gulat" variety, and instead of characters who struggle valiantly against impossible odds and situations, you get annoying teens who probably never saw a bad horror movie in their lives because otherwise they would have known better than to choose the courses of action they eventually decided upon. Frankly, halfway through the movie, you'll probably just be waiting for them to go ahead and die already.
That being said, there were a couple of positive points about our experience while watching Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. One was that we watched it in Greenhills Promenade's Dolby Atmos theater, whose surround-sound technology really made the most of the token creepy sound effects coming from somewhere behind or to the side (or above) the audience. Watching this movie in a theater with inferior sound quality is only bound to lower one's opinion of it. A second point is that it totally convinced us of the usefulness of cameras like the GoPro and others of its ilk, and indeed the film seems like a really long commercial for wearable video cams.
THE VERDICT: The easter eggs that refer to the other films of the Paranormal Activity franchise are just about all that make this film worth watching. If you're not a die-hard fan of the series, the level of actual "horror" in this fright flick will most likely disappoint.
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