Feminist Fear Freak: Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

Well, that was much better than I expected it to be. Although the trailer gave away pretty much every single jump in the entire film.

Paranormal Activity was a brilliant, fresh addition to the found-footage horror genre. Since then, it's struggled (with mixed results) to maintain any sort of fresh feeling. The second film managed to use sequel just-kidding-prequel(!) decently well. The third film, set in the 1980s, was much better, in my opinion. And the 4th film, which tried to tie in a new family with the demon-boy next door? Well, that was less than great.

But The Marked Ones actually is something different, with a radical change in setting. Set in Oxnard, California, a Latino suburb, the first act is almost brilliant. It shows a culture often ignored, vilified or parodied by mainstream media: a working class, Latino apartment community with a definite gang prescence. I found the characters realistic, well-rounded, and easy to love. The two main characters are a bit misogynistic (spying on their neighbor and making comments about a woman's great tits, stealing kisses from girls at a party), they are very realistic for boys of their age (just graduated high school). They aren't malicious, but they're not squeaky clean either. They're perfectly normal teenage boys.

And they're kind of hilarious. This isn't a film that takes itself too seriously, which personally, I appreciated. So often horror films try to be high and mighty and end up failing, becoming parodies of themselves. The Marked Ones is self-aware, and has moments where you're supposed to laugh. Instead of a ouija board, we have a psychic game of Simon. Instead of boring white girls with webcams (ala #4) we have teenage boys trying whacky stunts with their gopro. It all ads up to make the characters more real and more loveable than in previous installments.

The second half of the film, unfortunately, is a bit more uneven. While it's technically a "spin-off", not a sequel (Paranormal Activity 5 will be out in December), it tries a little too hard to maintain its connection to the series. Because it honestly could have been a stand-alone film in its own right and that would have required a bit less hand-waving about the plot. It's still a bit unclear how exactly all of this fits into the original plot, especially considering that cults & first-born sons were hand-waved into the second film to begin with. But the jumps can make you jump, and you're rooting for the characters the whole way through.

But one thing I just gotta love? It's a film where wealthy white women are the monsters and young Latino men are the heroes & victims. Think about that trope switch for a moment. In this paradigm, if a member of a Mexican gang shoots a middle-aged white woman in her fancy home... the audience stands up and cheers, because the middle-aged white woman was the bad guy. Because the enemy here is overwhelmingly rich old white ladies. The witches. The demon-summoners. And young brown men are the heroes, trying to stop wealthy white women from preying on helpless young boys. Portraying women as just as capable of being monsters as men? Check. Portraying young brown men not as dangerous thugs but as lovable, vulnerable heroes? Double check!

So, even though the ending is a bit confusing, the tropes are strong, and the found-footage genre is struggling, I still say this is a film worth seeing. Because the best horror films are the ones where you laugh as much as you scream and you're rooting for the characters to live up until the very end.

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