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Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones | 2014 | R | - 7.6.10

In this spin-off presented as "found footage" a recent high school graduate (Andrew Jacobs) is targeted for demon possession by the same evil spirit that inhabited two young women in the earlier films in this series. The young man and his best friend (Jorge Diaz) investigate his background and become confused and tormented. Also with Carlos Pratts, Molly Ephraim, Katie Featherstone, Crystal Santos and Richard Cabral. Directed by Christopher Landon. [1:24]

SEX/NUDITY 7 - Two teen boys drop a camera on a cable down an air vent to another apartment and see a teen girl standing with arms to her sides, in full frontal nudity, and one boy yells three times, "It's a naked girl!"; we see her full body, including breasts and pubic hair and the girl stands without moving as a nude older woman walks toward the camera, with fat jiggling around on her back, buttocks, thighs and lower legs (we also see her arms and the side of one breast with no distinct nipple) and the older woman paints a line on the girl's abdomen.
 A teen boy and a teen girl go into an abandoned apartment and the camera cuts to the girl wearing a black bra and black stretch pants, preening in front of a video camera that we seem to be looking through (she reveals moderate cleavage, bare shoulders, arms, abdomen and curves shown by the tight black pants); the boy appears and lies on top of her, kissing her briefly, then sits up, unzips his pants as she mumbles about a condom and he leaves the room (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details).
 Several teen girls wear short shorts that extend to the top of their thighs and low-cut tops that reveal moderate cleavage at parties and at home. Two men wearing sleeveless undershirts show full arms tattooed in designs. A neon sign as a wall lamp is made up of the outline of a nude woman sitting in a martini glass.
 A teen boy asks a teen girl for a kiss on the cheek, he says to win a bet, and he turns to kiss her on the lips instead. A woman at a party dances by rubbing her buttocks against a man's hip and crotch in a middle-length shot.
 A teen boy draws a penis and testicles on another teen boy's face and the second boy shouts when he sees the drawing in a mirror.
 A teen boy sees drops of blood on a bed and asks another teen boy, "Hey, did you start your period last night?"; the other boy shows him some blood spots on his arm and says he does not know where they came from. A teen boy bounces his male Chihuahua in front of a running camera, revealing the dog's groin; the boy says the ladies out there should look at the dog. A teen boy says that every woman who lives in a whorehouse becomes pregnant.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - A teen boy and a teen girl ask two adult men with automatic weapons to help them kill a coven of witches; the four people drive to an abandoned house and stable to find two witches in the stable area (one in a stall and one in the open) and one man shoots the two witches, presumably dead (no blood shows); three more witches stand outside the door after the two men and two teens run into the house and we see one witch's face in close-up, chanting an unknown language, as her eyes are glazed-over and her gray hair blows to one side; one man falls dead inside the house, the cause unclear and no blood is seen, and the other man shoots at additional witches (none hit) as the teens watch and record the events on a camera; a woman in a trance walks downstairs and into the kitchen, a man runs down the stairs behind her and they fist fight and choke each other as another man appears, charges the camera, bellowing and growling; the screen goes black for several seconds and we hear scratching noises like large rat claws on wood and chains ratcheting.
 A teen boy falls from the roof of an apartment building (we hear that he probably jumped) and crashes loudly into the roof of a car parked at the curb; we see his hands and feet protruding through torn cloth, metal, and some blood at the top of the car as the scene ends. A woman falls through a glass ceiling in an old house, shattering it and she is apparently dead; a sheet flies at a teen boy, who shouts and a possessed teen boy charges the other boy and growls as the scene ends.
 A woman visits a Hispanic shaman to receive a blessing and a potion: she places three raw eggs into a bowl and calls her supposedly possessed grandson into the room, he sits and she rubs one egg in its shell across his head, body and arms, making the sign of the cross; he reaches out and crushes the egg, his own hand bleeding profusely around it and bleeding onto his grandmother's hand and arm as the internal egg slime drips together with the blood; the lights go out, the boy's best friend shouts and uses his camera's night vision scope while nervously searching the room when the friend spies a strange curve in a wall and watches the wall suck backward and then violently spit the possessed boy out and towards the camera; the possessed boy is seen standing at the top of an outdoor staircase and his grandmother is shown lying facedown at the bottom with her head in a pool of blood (we hear that she is in the hospital).
 A teen boy drives down an alley and his car stalls when a possessed teen boy approaches, punches through the driver's side window, drags the other boy out and beats him until a teen girl in the car gets a ball bat and hits the possessed boy in the back and head, knocking him out; the boy and girl load the possessed teen into the car and as they drive away they are broadsided by an SUV with a lot of loud crashing and bent metal, but no injuries; as the SUV speeds away, the teen girl shouts that the witches took the possessed teen boy and the scene ends.
 A teen girl opens a trap door after hearing thuds and creaking in an empty apartment; she sticks her head into the opening and is held in a chokehold by a hand and arm that she shakes off and she runs off screen, shouting for help; the arm reappears and we see an individual climb up from the basement and run away. Two teen boys go into the apartment and another teen boy in a doorway scares them (his eyes are large and black, without pupils, rimmed with purple shadows and he sweats) and he shows them his forearm with a huge red bite mark (the marks suddenly move away like bugs crawling under his skin) before telling one of the other boys to commit suicide to avoid the sickness that the strange boy has. A teen boy finds journals containing witchcraft rituals and then sees a huge bloody bite mark on his forearm; one page of the journal shows a crude ink line drawing of a nude woman with a mark painted on her abdomen (a circle within a triangle).
 A teen boy snarls and shouts at his friends for no reason, and then attacks another teen boy in a shop, unprovoked; he knocks the other boy into a shelf of glass-bottled juice drinks, shattering bottles but not injuring the boy and the shop owner charges forward with a ball bat, which the first boy grabs and takes away from the man; the man runs while the boy pounds the checkout counter with the bat and leaves the store to end the scene; the boy tells his sister the next day that he cannot control himself any longer. In a darkened room we see a small light come on and a possessed teen boy's face turned toward the camera as he seems to hang a teen girl upside down from the ceiling in the shadows (we see only her upside-down head and shoulders and her eyes are open and unmoving). Two thugs attack a teen boy and a male friend at a soda machine and one of the boys seems to flip the two adults into a wall and over a picnic table without touching them; the boy is able to fall backwards and not touch the floor, as if something holds him up and the other boy falls but is not injured. Two thugs attack two teen boys in a parked car, pounding on the windows, but the boys escape unharmed.
 A teen boy looks in his bathroom mirror and sees something in his eye; he reaches up and pulls long, curling, dark wire-like strands from both inner eye corners and throws the strands on the floor to end the scene as he asks, "What the [mild obscenity deleted] is happening to me?" In an abandoned house used by chanting witches with long gray hair and glazed eyes, we see a pentagram painted on a wall and another pentagram painted on a tile floor, ringed with candles and containing a hairy head in the center (the head could be either a male human or a goat; it is hard to tell).
 A woman dies in an apartment below where a party is taking place; two teen boys and a teen girl investigate and find artifacts of black magic and VHS tapes on paranormal activities by the boxful; on a counter in the apartment is a crystal pyramid and stones and in the basement on another counter we see short bones, stones, unrecognizable small objects and on a separate table, and a dozen medical and surgical tools. EMTs are shown carrying a woman out of her apartment in a body bag amid flashing lights on the emergency vehicles. Three teenagers play "fortune telling" with a game device and a pack of cards in several scenes; the game seems controlled by demons.
 Two teen boys hear strange groaning and sighing sounds coming from a witch-woman‘s apartment that is below theirs; the sounds come through the floor and an air duct; they put a camera through the duct, see some sort of body painting ritual (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details) and quickly retrieve the camera. A dirty mirror in one scene and a dark, dirty window in an abandoned house shows partial reflections of an indistinct human figure briefly. A teen boy begins acting strangely and he hangs around a witch's apartment where we hear female screams coming from inside in several scenes. A camera left beside a trap door in an apartment shows a teen boy climbing out of the basement with a blank facial expression. A man jumps out of a closet in an empty house and scares two teenagers; he tells them to leave. A teen boy's wall shows a red-lettered word that seems to be in blood. A teen girl is frightened away from an apartment when she opens a trap door in the floor under her and the scene ends.
 A teen boy hears his dog crying in the basement of an empty apartment; he enters the basement and the camera cuts to a scene of him in his bedroom, laughing at the ceiling and the camera pans around and we see his dog struggling, but stuck to the ceiling upside down, while the boy's friend shouts that the dog is being hurt and needs to be released as the scene ends.
 Neighbors talk about an older woman living in a ground floor apartment and the possibility that she is a witch; children and teens snoop around her door and she walks up behind them and hits two teen boys with a bottle of dish soap in a plastic shopping bag.
 A twenty-something woman advises a group of seventeen- and eighteen-year olds that a coven of witches uses a circle inside a triangle as their logo and targets unborn babies for possession so that demons can take over the world; we hear that the witches paint their logo on the abdomens of the mothers of the "marked" and act as midwives to ready the babies for demonic possession. A teen boy finds photos of himself currently, of himself as a baby, and of his pregnant mother standing beside his father in the basement of an abandoned apartment where a witch lived and died; he tells his sister and a male friend that he was marked for demon possession in the womb. A headline in a newspaper clipping on a wall full of clippings about witchcraft and murder says, "Couple Found Murdered. Son Kidnapped." A teen boy tells a male friend and his sister that he feels like he has something like superpowers and we see him blow up an air mattress all at once with a single breath.
 A teen boy sits in a plastic laundry basket with a camera tied on it and slides down a flight of concrete stairs outside, shouting and falling at the bottom; we see that his knee and elbow are cut and bleeding.
 Two teen boys light a bottle rocket on a sidewalk; first, it is a dud and then it fires with a loud boom and flash of flame. A teen boy jumps at another teen boy, toward the camera and elicits a shout. A teen boy laughs with a friend and flatulates loudly.

LANGUAGE 10 - About 74 F-words and its derivatives, 1 obscene hand gesture, 55 scatological terms, 9 anatomical terms, 5 mild obscenities, name-calling (Sherlock Holmes, witch, stupid, crazy, idiot), stereotypical references to Hispanics, Catholics, the superstitious, teenagers, women, witches, demons, police officers, 17 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh my God, God, Jesus, I swear to God, Holy [scatological term deleted], Holy [F-word deleted]).

SUBSTANCE USE - A teen boy smokes using a bong and coughs until he bends over in a coughing fit. Teenagers drink beer from bottles and cups (labels on bottles are not readable) at a graduation party in a home, several adults drink beer from bottles, adults drink beer from bottles at a house party, teen boys and girls drink beer for bottles and cups and chug clear liquor from fifth-size bottles, a teen boy drinks two tequila shots with his grandmother in her kitchen, two teen boys drink beer from bottles around a kitchen table, and several bottles of dark liquors sit in a corner on a counter in an abandoned house. A teen boy smokes a cigarette (could be tobacco or a drug; it is not shown closely) and blows smoke rings in his bedroom.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Legends and superstitions, Hispanic communities, witchcraft, demon possession, supernatural rituals and spells, superpowers, unexplained events, murder.

MESSAGE - Avoid exploring empty apartments alone.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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