Ryan and Emily Fleege (played by Chris J. Murray and Brit Shaw) have just moved into a new home with their six-year-old daughter, Leila (Ivy George). They are being visited by both Ryan’s brother, Mike (Dan Gill), and Emily’s best friend, Skyler (Olivia Dudley). While cleaning out the garage, Mike and Ryan come across an old video camera and several VHS tapes featuring young Katie and Kristi from the previous Paranormal Activity films. It turns out that their house has been built over the remains of Katie and Kristi’s old house and that the old video camera can pick up and record traces of ghosts and evil spirits.

That last bit is exactly why this installment of Paranormal Activity doesn’t work. The previous films were scary because the characters could hear and sometimes feel the spirits but they couldn’t actually see them. That always left open the possibility that they were just imagining things. In this one, everyone can actually see the evidence of the house being haunted but they still don’t leave! This is the first Paranormal Activity to make heavy use of CGI, which goes against the whole idea of the films being found footage.

The other problem is that, six films in, the Paranormal Activity series finally fell victim to its own increasingly complex mythology. The first two films worked because they kept things simple. Things started to get more complicated during the third film. By the time Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension was released, the story had grown to include a coven of witches, a family curse, a demon named Toby, and now a camera that can film otherwise invisible spirits. The more elements that are added, the harder it is to ignore the holes in the plot and illogical actions of the characters.

I would have ended things with the second film, but I also would have lost out on all the money made by the third, fourth, and fifth films. Even this installment, which was the weakest box office performer of all of the films, still made a profit. That shows how much I know.