Paranormal Activity 4 vs Alex Cross: John Gosling previews the week's new movies (10-19-12)

The Paranormal Activity franchise is a multi-million dollar global phenomenon and shows little sign of stopping. The origins of the series stretch back to 2007 when director Oren Peli gathered a group of unknown actors together and shot a very small scale scare flick utilizing the 'found footage' technique (to keep costs costs down he even converted his house into a shooting location and set just seven days aside for filming). The story followed a young couple who encounter strange goings-on in their house. Katie claims an evil presence has always been with her, while her partner Micah is skeptical Setting up a video camera in their bedroom, they soon discover unexplained events, which escalate in the space of a few days. Made for just $15K, Paranormal Activity began gaining strong word of mouth thanks to an impressive showing at the ScreamFest Horror festival. This screening ended up securing Peli an agent but attempts to get the film a distribution deal stumbled even after the director (and Miramax's Jason Blum) re-edited the feature for its Sundance debut. A number of DVDs were sent out to any potentially interested party and one managed to catch the attention of Dreamworks execs Stacey Snider and Adam Goodman, who brought the film to Steven Spielberg's notice. The studio quickly cut a deal with Peli, on the proviso that he re-shoot the picture with an increased budget and higher production values. He agreed, on the condition that he could screen his original version for an audience first. When people walked out not long into the screening, Goodman figured they'd backed a failure. However, when he realized that the people had left due to being frightened by what they'd seen, his opinion changed. The remake idea was scrapped and the studio quickly moved to purchase the domestic rights to distribute (via their deal with Paramount) and the international rights to any sequels. Peli then re-edited the film, and altered the ending from the one seen at Screamfest. But, due to ongoing talks between Paramount and Dreamworks regarding their partnership, all of the latter's productions were delayed for the foreseeable future. Only when Adam Goodman became head of Paramount in summer 2009 did Paranormal Activity gain a release date.

Alex Cross gets a terribly generic, almost satirical trailer...

It's no secret that I'm a fan of both of the prior Morgan Freeman-starring Alex Cross films.  I enjoyed Kiss the Girls and find Along Came A Spider to be among my guiltiest pleasures.  But aside from inexplicably being PG-13 despite an inordinate amount of violence just in the trailer, the clip above feels like a direct-to-DVD franchise reboot more than a theatrical return, at times feeling like a parody of the genre.  Tyler Perry is fine as Cross, but he's of course no Morgan Freeman and the film clearly has to make an effort to convince you that he's a brilliant and sharp-witted detective, which was presumed with Freeman (and arguably would have been presumed with original lead Idris Elba).  Moreover, Perry's constant aggravation at Matthew Fox's raping and murdering is weird coming from someone who is supposed to be a longtime profiler.  Matthew Fox looks to be having a blast as the main baddie, and his cartoonish antics are in step with a literary series that basically plays out like a gore-drenched variation on a super hero comic book. While we see John C. McGinley right off the bat, Rachel Nichols, Jean Reno, and Gincarlo Esposito are apparently MIA so far.  Still, I can't help but wonder if Criminal Minds has completely filled the void for this kind of material, as that show is basically James Patterson meets Justice League.  Come what may, especially with the on-the-nose dialogue and somewhat C-level action beats, this basically feels like a bad extended two-part episode of Criminal Minds, or rather its awful spin-off Suspect Behavior from a couple years ago.  Oh well, Summit/Lionsgate will be releasing this one on October 19th.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson