Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021)
Directed by William Eubank
Margot is a documentary filmmaker looking to meet her long-lost mother and extended family in a secluded Amish community. She and her film crew soon realize the family that welcomes them into their home might be hiding a sinister secret.
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6 films that influenced Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin
What critics say influenced Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: With Next of Kin , the Paranormal Activity series gets seriously Midsommar ‘d!
Setting the film in such a technologically devoid backdrop is an intriguing premise, and capturing the lives of the cloistered community with its archaic rituals certainly lends a particular Midsommar vibe to the proceedings.
The Amish congregation definitely gives off Midsommar vibes, and there is even one point toward the end where chaos has descended on the farm…and it literally resembles the farm zombies level in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. There were tons of these little similarities throughout the film, so much so that it began to feel like the movie was trying to scratch as many itches as possible.
In conjuring its image of life on this farm, “Next of Kin” plays off several other movies — “Witness,” for one, but also two films that aren’t about the Amish: M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” (which I think is the last really good M. Night Shyamalan film) and “Midsommar,” Ari Aster’s epic nightmare set in a pastoral cult community in Sweden.
Perhaps Eubank is attempting to tap into the othering that’s seen in folk horror films like The Witch or Midsommar.
Not unlike Will Smith in I Am Legend , this is a movie star who is largely alone, save for a dog and a robot portrayed by a terrific Caleb Landry Jones using motion capture.
Review: This is a film I’ve been tracking for some time, as we don’t often get Tom Hanks in a sci-fi film (he’s done some fantasy, but I believe Cloud Atlas is the only thing close to this level).
Perhaps Eubank is trying to cash in on the broader contextual fears stoked by M. Night Shyamalan, who had an Amish-like setting for The Village and centered scares on the elderly and aging in Old and The Visit.
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The subgenre’s critics weighed too harshly on the middling misses ( The Gallows ) rather than the inventive hits that cleverly utilized the technique ( Hardcore Henry , Unfriend: The Dark Web, and indie darling Rec are all enhanced by their harsh realism streak).
Between Greyhound , News of the World , and now Finch , it seems as though Hanks is recently getting a lot out of playing these thoughtful characters holding a lot inside.