This Friday brings the resurgence of the Paranormal Activity franchise with a new entry, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, arriving exclusively on Paramount+ on October 29, 2021. Next of Kin appears to give the series a fresh start after six films and a non-canon sidequel, all connected to the demon Toby and his coven of followers in some way.
The popular found footage series began with 2007’s Paranormal Activity, which introduced subtle supernatural chills that slowly gave way to a full-blown, jump-scare heavy demonic assault. Each franchise entry built upon the mythology while adhering to a formula that included a potent blend of understated scares and explosive moments of terror.
Ahead of Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, let’s look back at ten of the franchise’s scariest scenes and moments.
Ouija on Fire – Paranormal Activity
Micah (Micah Sloat) ignores pleas and brings home an Ouija board anyway once paranormal activity around the home escalates. Katie (Katie Featherston) is furious, and the pair leave the house in an argument. While gone, the camera captures the planchette moving on its own. Then the board spontaneously bursts into flames. It’s the most overt sign of a supernatural presence at this point of the movie, making for a chilling escalation of sinister intention; there is nothing friendly about whatever is haunting Katie and Micah.
Freaky Footprints – Paranormal Activity
Another subtler but disconcerting moment comes when Micah sprinkles baby powder all over the floor upstairs, leading to their bedroom. They awake in the middle of the night by sounds and are horrified to find footprints in the powder. The footprints lead to the attic, where Katie finds a childhood picture long thought lost in a fire. The picture’s existence and implications take the focus in this scene, but the very inhuman footprints in the baby powder prove far more unsettling. It’s visual confirmation that this haunting is far more complex and dangerous.
Kinect Kid – Paranormal Activity 4
The Xbox Kinect becomes a surprising tool for detecting paranormal activity in the franchise’s fourth entry, but it dates the film in a clunky way, and its intended scare moments don’t always land. Creepy neighbor kid Robbie (Brady Allen) can often be seen interacting with shapes picked up on the Kinect in reviewed footage, but it’s never as effective as intended. Until that is, a fully-realized figure of a child walks behind Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp) in the middle of the night. It’s eerie for how sharp and focused the image is and the questions it raises. Just who or what is after Wyatt? And why?
Kristi Dragged to Basement – Paranormal Activity 2
Like Katie in the first film, her sister Kristi (Sprague Grayden) gets dragged away by the demon. Only this time, there’s no one home to pull her back to safety. Despite multiple attempts to break free, Kristi gets dragged all the way downstairs and into the creepy basement. When she’s freed, it’s clear that she’s firmly in the demon’s grip. This scene gives a clearer idea of how Katie got possessed in the first film. It’s made even more unsettling with the reveal of scratch marks on the basement door, of Kristi’s attempts to flee, as well as the word “mine” in Latin.
Witch Siege – Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
The Marked Ones offers the most action-heavy and intense finale of the franchise, emphasizing intense. Hector (Jorge Diaz) and Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh) enlist friends to help them retrieve their possessed pal Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) from his kidnappers, only to be met with a violent coven of witches that not even guns can stop. It’s a frantic and deadly siege that culminates in a surprising time loop tie-in to the first film.
Trapped in the Basement – Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
Jesse gets lured to the basement through the trapdoor in his neighbor’s apartment one night by his dog’s cries. The trapdoor slams shut while he’s down there, leaving him alone in the dark with the ghostly appearances of young Katie and Kristi, followed by a malevolent entity that wants to claim him. It’s a shocking jolt that firmly connects this spinoff into the main canon, but seeing a black-eyed, ghoulish-looking Katie and Kristi is alarming in and of itself.
Chandelier – Paranormal Activity 4
Alex (Kathryn Newton) arrives home after school and expects an empty house, but a ball bounces down the stairs to greet her. When finding no one, she shrugs it off and plops down on her bed. Then loud bangs draw her out into the hallway, where she finds a trail of toys leading to her brother’s bedroom. As Alex peers into his closet, the toy train starts up and startles her. That eerie slow build to a jump scare would be enough, but it’s only the precursor to the more significant scare. As Alex runs downstairs to chase Robbie, she very nearly gets crushed by the entryway chandelier that crashes from above.
Bloody Mary – Paranormal Activity 3
When young Katie convinces her babysitter to play Bloody Mary, savvy horror fans automatically tense up; we know this will end badly for the characters. The lights go out, save for the single red dot of the camera in record mode as the pair chant “Bloody Mary.” But they quickly get turned back on when Katie’s babysitter winces from pain and lifts his shirt to find a deep scratch on his skin. It’s a minor but effective scare that could’ve ended there, but then the demon decides to terrorize them with the lights on, sending Katie into hysterics. No one could blame her, either.
Kitchen Tantrum – Paranormal Activity 2
Until this point, all paranormal activity happened in darkness at night. The daylight provided a reprieve from Toby’s shenanigans. That’s what made this sudden jump scare even more frightening. Kristi was sitting alone in her kitchen, deep in her thoughts, when the kitchen cabinets all flew open at once with a loud bang. It catches both Kristi and the viewer off guard in a breathless way.
Oscillating Fan – Paranormal Activity 3
The ’80s setting for the storyline of this prequel meant getting creative with the found footage format. Enter the camera rigged to an oscillating fan to pan and scan the downstairs living space. That comes in handy for the film and the franchise’s most innovative and effective scare. During a quiet night, young Katie and Kristi are tucked away upstairs in bed while their babysitter sits at the kitchen table for some homework. The camera pans back and forth from the empty living room to the kitchen. Eventually, a child-sized bedsheet ghost appears at the far end, staring at the babysitter’s back and making its way closer with every turn of the camera. As it reaches her back, the sheet deflates to the ground, the figure inside it vanishing into thin air. It’s only then that the babysitter realizes she wasn’t alone and how close she came to a terrifying encounter. But the audience knows, and we’re left with serious goosebumps.