Horror is often one of the most profitable of genres: cheap to make, rarely reliant on names, and always popular on home video. And as such, once you've got a good thing going, the instinct is to milk it into the ground. Which is how we ended up with a dozen Jason movies, ten "Halloween"s and seven "Saw" pictures. So it shouldn't surprise you that a fourth "Paranormal Activity" is on the way.
After all, they cost barely a few million dollars, and two of the three films to date have taken more than $100 million at the domestic box office, an enormously successful rate of return. So, as such, after the success of "Paranormal Activity 3" last year, the series, like clockwork, will be back this Halloween with a fourth installment, with "Catfish" directors Henry Joost and Ariel Shulman returning for their second go at the series, and Apple just premiered the first trailer for the new film, while First Showing have a second clip with some slightly different footage.
And it looks… exactly the same. Well, not quite. The series has now added that classic horror staple, in the shape of a teenage girl of questionable legality in a low-cut top, and seems to be making use of webcams. Hurray for novelty! And having worked its way through the extended family of original protagonist Katie, it now seems as if the new central characters are… her neighbors. Awesome.
Anyway, we have no intention of going anywhere near this, but fans will undoubtedly eat it up all the same. It opens on October 19th, which in the tradition of the franchise, means that filming will probably begin on about October 4th (in fact, it got underway in June, but you get our point).