Paranormal Activity 4

Doors creak, shadows flicker, cats jump: the laziest sequel yet in the supernatural franchise barely bothers to change the formula at all. After recapping the conclusion of the second film, the story jumps to 2011, when a Nevada family take in the young son of their mysterious new neighbour after she's admitted to hospital. Soon the boy is having a detrimental effect on the family's own six-year-old, talking to an invisible "friend" and awakening malevolent forces. Although Skype, camera phones and an Xbox Kinect are added into the video surveillance mix to break up the visual monotony, the reasons for this point-of-view filming are highly spurious, even in a recycled scenario that's rife with implausibility. There's not even any rudimentary character development, and this instalment adds absolutely nothing to the series mythology. But horror fans will at least cling to the Rosemary's Baby and Poltergeist references when little else is happening on screen for long periods of time.