‘Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin’ Review: Seventh and Final Installment to Franchise that Defined a Sub Genre of Horror

“Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin” is the seventh and (thankfully) final installment to the once mighty “Paranormal Activity” Franchise.

What started with the groundbreaking and nearly flawless indie styled original, “Next of Kin” divorces itself from any of the previous characters and stories. You could watch this without any knowledge of any previous movie. But should you bother?

Released in 2021 during the midst of the Covid Pandemic, “Kin” was written by Christopher Landon and directed by William Eubank. Series creator Oren Peli and horror fixture Jason Blum served as producers.

The Plot

Margot (Emily Bader) was abandoned at a hospital entrance upon birth. Now she’s a twenty-something about to meet her real family for the first time and video documenting the experience. Boyfriend Chris (Roland Buck III) and pal Dale (Dan Lippert) venture with her to a remote commune in the Amish countryside. Its isolated. It’s the dead of winter. And of course, strange things are afoot.

I haven’t encountered any of these actors before. Emily Bader serves as the lead and is fine in the role. Not outstanding but not a liability, Bader is pleasant to watch and behaves in standard horror movie fashion. Lippert (who looks like a discount Dave Grohl) offers good comedic relief. He lands in the middle of cartoonish and buffoonish but never strays from being a realistic clown we’ve all encountered.    

The Setting

A frosty backdrop is a nice addition to any horror film. We’ve seen classics such as “The Shining” and “The Thing” use this to their advantage. “Kin” does the same. Roads buried in snow leave you stranded. Freezing temperatures make electronics fail. Combined, they put our protags in a situation where escape is impossible.

The characters interact with Samual (Jaye Ayres-Brown) a fellow college-aged sort, and kin to Margot. Samual is responsible for bringing Margot et al. to the commune and introducing her maternal grandfather, Jacob (Tom Nowicki). At first, it seems like Jacob and his clan are good intentioned though devout luddites. But they have bizarre rituals, and an old church hidden in the woods.

The premise itself, coupled with the strange behaviors of the family had me thinking of “Midsommar” which effectively conveys the outsider in peril storyline.

The Cons

I’m a huge fan of the Found Footage sub-genre. It blew up the horror world in 1999 with “The Blair Witch Project” and served as a mainstay for the two decades that followed.

Most entries aren’t up to the caliber of “The Blair Witch Project,” “Cloverfield,” or the early “Paranormal Activity” films. As time and tech move forward, its no longer a unique style, and the creativity in coming up with plausible stories has been on the steady decline.

“Kin” suffers blatantly with the oft-asked question; why would the characters still be filming, especially in perilous situations? We understand Margot’s wanting to document the events. She has found the actual footage of her birth mother dropping her off at the hospital, and it serves as her fuel to meet her family.

When the “scares” start to happen, it makes sense that Chris, Dale, and Margot herself would want to capture things on video. But they continue to lug cameras around and film everything even when its life and death stakes.

The dialogue is unbelievable at times. And there are sound effects that accompany jump scares, something that makes no sense at all. The film would be better off just being a movie and dropping the found footage element altogether.

The Verdict

“Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin” is a typical horror film hoping to cash in on the franchise moniker. Unfortunately, it came about ten years too late. At 96 minutes, it’s a long for the style. Since there’s no point to being found footage, its just a below average attempt at being a scary movie.