I might be wrong, but I predict that after the Earth has suffered some kind of an apocalypse, and all that is left are the cockroaches, those same cockroaches are going to be making Paranormal Activity movies. Because even a roach can afford to make this stuff, assuming someone has taught them what “found footage” means. The haunted house that Jason Blum built will not be stopped, and Paranormal Activity 5 has landed a director to go with its newly signed writers, according to Deadline. But while it was somewhat exciting when Catfish’s Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman came into the franchise on the third entry, there’s no real reason to perk up here.
Gregory Plotkin will be making his directorial debut with P.A. 5, but he’s not a newbie here. He served as an editor for the last three films, as well as the upcoming spinoff Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, directed by Christopher Landon. Incidentally, Plotkin also edited Landon’s only other directorial effort, the 2010 thriller Burning Palms. Birds of a low-budget feather, I guess. While Plotkin also served as an editor on the dreadful 2008 thriller Untraceable, he has served as an assistant editor or associate editor on many more films, including Michael Mann’s The Insider, Peter Berg’s Friday Night Lights and Andrew Jarecki’s All Good Things. Considering the P.A. movies seem to edit themselves due to the very nature of how the director wants to play a scene, I’m hoping Plotkin really is a multi-talented guy.
He’ll be writing from a script written by two people even more unknown. The Hollywood Reporter named Jason Pagan and Andrew Deutschman as the ones responsible for carrying on this exceedingly tedious timeline. Pagan and Deutschman made news waves some months back when they were tapped to write the microbudget found footage sci-fi flick Almanac for Michael Bay to produce through Platinum Dunes. Bay then hired the duo to write Raindrop, which is another found footage sci-fi movie. Sounds like someone is putting all their handheld camera-shaped apples all in one basket here. As you can imagine, there are no details yet about where their script will take the story of the most patient ghosts in cinematic history.
Chances are this will be a good move for Plotkin’s career. With The Marked Ones wrapped, Landon has already landed his next job on the bigger-budgeted comedy horror Boy Scouts vs. Zombies. Doesn’t matter how many times I type that, it still looks odd. But it just goes to show you that these films create big rewards for little relative effort.
Paranormal Activity 5 is set to hit theaters on October 24, 2014. Need a reminder of why this series should probably give it up? Here’s the Paranormal Activity 4 trailer.
