Case Study - Paranormal Activity 4

Paranormal Activity 4

• Featured numerous incidents of product placement for products and companies such as Macbook, Xbox Kinect, Smart Phones and Canon.
• Grossed over $91 million.
• Notorious for accidentally being screened to minors at a cinema instead of Madagascar 3, this was a popular news story and likely gained the film some more notoriety. 

E - Media

• Multiple trailers for the film are on YouTube, all of them have over a million views.
• Poor online reviews but seems to be building a cult following with some saying that people who liked the previous films will enjoy the fourth.

-  Scott Weinberg gave a positive review, saying that there was "some fun" to be had in the film, however also felt that the film would likely only be enjoyed by fans of the previous films. Fred Topel also gave a positive review, saying that the film included iconography from some classic horror films

- While it does manage to wring a few more screams out of the franchise's surprisingly durable premise, Paranormal Activity 4 provides fans of the series with dismayingly diminishing returns.

- Metacritic - 40/100

- Rotten Tomatoes - 25% approval rating.

Broadcast

• Commercials for the film were regularly screened on TV after 9pm showing when the film could be seen in theatres.
• The editing for the trailer was fast paced and every shot was incredibly short and usually showed a large room with one person in the room, likely to make the viewer feel more vulnerable.
• Dark, drab colours create feelings of unease.
• The ghost that haunts people in the film is never fully shown, the ghost is usually just a dark silhouette of a human which piques the viewers interest as to what exactly the ghost is, where it came from and why it haunts these particular characters.
• Another trailer for the film actually featured footage of people watching the full movie in a theatre, we get to see people getting shocked and scared which ensures the viewer that the movie is genuinely scary.

Print

• Paranormal Activity 4 poster:

This poster makes its narrative very clear from the camera perspective of this shot. We can tell that this movie is a "hidden camera" movie, first popularised by 'The Blair Witch Project', this style has been copied by a number of horror films since then. "Hidden camera" films have become very popular in the last decade, the makers of the Paranormal Activity series know this and market the film in such a way that moviegoers know what to expect, fans of "hidden camera" movies will recognise the format and be interested in the film. Often people enjoy seeing the same film they've seen before but with different characters, setting etc and will prefer to watch a film because they know what to expect rather than to see an original film where they may be dissapointed.

Another example of smart marketing is the way that the ghost is depicted in the poster; an omionus, dark silhouette of a human being. In many ways this is much scarier than depicting a full human being with clear facial features, arms, legs etc because a darkened silhouette inspires curiosity, the poster leaves people wondering who the ghost is, why it haunts this house and these particular characters and what destruction will the ghost cause.