This starts with the end of Paranormal Activity 3. It's 1988 Santa Rosa, California. Dennis is killed. Grandma Lois leads Kristi and Katie upstairs to Kent, another disciple of Tobi. They are told that there will be another. Some 25 years later, Ryan and Emily are the new homeowner with their young daughter Leila. Friend Skyler is visiting. Also uncle Mike has arrived after a bad breakup. They find an old camera and videotapes left from the previous homeowner. The camera has an unusual effect. The tapes are some twenty years old and the people seems to be interacting with the present day world.The franchise is getting old and the story of the girls are being forgotten. Honestly, I barely remember some of the previous movies. It's nice to tie this back to three. This faces many of the same problems as other horrors. There has to be a reason for the family to stay so long in the house. They do call in Father Todd but it's not enough. It's the same and it's old. At some point, the franchise needs to be blown up or it needs to end. The problem is that it's so cheap to make that somebody will make another in the future.

As far as most sequels go they more than most likely start thinning out the original concept. This is not the case with Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, though. This one retains all the creepy elements of the former films and branches it out to another level. Talk about adding some fear into our lives during a season known for Santa Claus and elves and reindeer. The character developments were fresh and the story line builds on as the film plays out making for a really eerie ending (and, of course, more than enough room for another sequel). I would have given it a 9.5 had it not been for the CGI effects ingrained into the VHS copies they were viewing. These were, at best, somewhat OK. The film also took on a demonic presence unlike the others and we even have a portal to that dimension made quite evident here. The little girl portraying Leila made quite an impression as well. It really was tons of creepy fun watching this latest of the Paranormal Activity movies.

I've seen all the installments of the paranormal activity franchise and I'm sorry to say but I feel profoundly let down. Lets start with just the final movie, "Ghost Dimension". The concept was so interesting, and it had great lead up but by the time we got to this final chapter the plot had become incredibly predictable. It's the same movie washed, rinsed, and repeated over and over again. Family has camera, spooky stuff happens, spooky stuff gets weirder and weirder until finally the family dies and one of the family members goes missing. The final plot fit this cookie cutter ending perfectly and now Tobi lives, though what I find the funniest part about this movie, is the overpowered demon Tobi forces the plot to become cheap. He's unbeatable, it makes a mockery of the very source material this show uses, religion. If you're going to use religion as the source material for your show you have to set up rules. If demons could easily kill ministers, pastors, fathers, etc. with a flick of the wrist then why the heck would churches even exist anymore? If a demon can so easily kill anything around it just by playing tricks on a family until its strong enough to wipe them out. You can't create a world without some rules or you complete deflate the both the antagonist and the protagonist. We know the families going to die so we don't fully invest ourselves, and we know that the demon is somehow all powerful (even when the source material for the demon concept comes from religion and includes demons being cast out easily by servants of the lord so it makes no sense why a spirit, prince of hell, or demon has so much ridiculous power) Another huge flaw in all of this franchise is the fact that they use children as vessels, sorry but that also goes against the source material in question, whenever you have great darkness you also have to have great light. You have a demon, you also have an angel. You have God and you have the devil, and by the way God wins so I'm not sure how demons in this show apparently just bypassed their own higher powers. My point is, if you end every single movie with the same thing, and have a total disregard to the source material, then your audience is going to get annoyed or bored. Making a movie about evil spirits, and witches, and rituals and what not is all fun and all but you also have to remember that all of those things have to have their opposites has well. Just like you can't have the devil if you don't like-wise have God. They go together you can't believe in one and deny the existence of the other. This comes full circle as each movie ends with the demon simply killing everything in sight with a flick of its finger.

I approached this movie with low expectations due to the negative reviews and the slipshod quality of Paranormal Activity 4. However, I found myself pleasantly surprised to discover that this movie did not suffer from the plodding pace of the first movie or the frustratingly unintelligent characters that were featured in PA2 and PA4 (recall that the father in the second movie had cameras installed but then refused to watch the recorded footage). This entry moves along at a brisk pace and is never boring, and you never have to wait too long for some creepy visuals or a good jump scare (yes, there are jump scares and this will turn some viewers off, but it didn't bother me as I was in the mood to be startled). The character of Mike is somewhat annoying but he's there to serve as comic relief. Many of the visual effects are subtle and done quite well, such as the particles and shapes captured by the modified "ghost camera," but the use of CGI becomes much too heavy-handed in the latter half of the film. Whereas most of the scares are done very well, a few of the CGI effects seen near the end of the movie are more funny than scary and this is not a good thing; sparser use of computer- generated visuals would have been a wise move, but instead they were VERY liberal with its application here (especially in comparison with the previous entries). Also, without spoiling anything, there are some frustrating problems raised by the plot twists that occur near the end of the film and PA5 ultimately creates more questions than it answers. Fans who were hoping for a neat and tidy wrap-up to the franchise will be somewhat disappointed with PA5. However, if you accept that these films have had convoluted plots from PA2 onward and you're just in the mood to be scared and entertained, you'll probably enjoy this one. It's a solid popcorn movie for a rainy night.Just don't puzzle over the continuity of the plot too much... You'll give yourself a migraine.