Cast: Kathryn Newton,Matt Shively,Aidan Lovekamp,Brady Allen,Katie Featherston Director: Oren Peli Indian Express Ratings:**1/2 THE reason Paranormal Activity continues to be a successful franchise is how well it blends it with the "normal". Here again,great care is taken to ensure that the story of Katie is carried forward amidst a warm and loving but familiarly distracted family. The scares may be few and far between,and almost laughable in the way movie No.4 brings these to a finale,but the interludes are too nicely filled out for us to complain too much. A great part of the credit goes to the tweens Alex and boyfriend Ben,played by Kathryn Newton and Matt Shively. Prone to recording each moment of their life,on everything from their iPhones to webcams,and to being on constant video touch,it is they or more precisely their gadgets that are the watching eyes of Paranormal Activity 4. And it is they who notice that strange things start happening once a withdrawn,lonely neighbourhood child comes to live at their place. His mother has been in some sort of an unexplained accident and Robbie (Allen) has no one else he can live with. Robbie is six,and so is Alexs younger brother Wyatt (Lovekamp) just the age the boy who was kidnapped by his murderer aunt Katie at the end of movie No.3 would be. Both Robbie and Wyatt are also adopted. Plus Robbies mother is none other than the staple Katie of the previous three films. The film doesnt fiddle much with the common scary tricks of swinging chandeliers,flying knives,a kids tricycle moving on its own,gadgets that turn on by themselves and children waking up and walking around at night. An Xbox Kinect feature is a saving grace,lending the proceedings an otherworldly hue when the lights have been turned out. However,the film proceeds to even dilute this with an overkill. Still,in an age of multi-million monsters,it's nice to be left astir by everyday basic innate fears. shalini.langer@expressindia.com
