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The Paranormal Activity Franchise, Ranked

The iconic Paranormal Activity franchise began as a low-budget exploration of the Very Bad Thing that happened to Katie (Katie Featherston) and her asshole boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat) over the course of a couple nights in their San Diego home, where they are being haunted by a demonic presence. However, after setting the world on fire both in terms of its reputation as a terrifying motion picture and a return on investment, the original 2007 found footage movie quickly expanded into a sprawling franchise that now includes multiple members of Katie’s extended family, more than half a dozen movies of varying quality, and a timeline that even Christopher Nolan would say was too complicated.

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The iconic Paranormal Activity franchise began as a low-budget exploration of the Very Bad Thing that happened to Katie (Katie Featherston) and her asshole boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat) over the course of a couple nights in their San Diego home, where they are being haunted by a demonic presence. However, after setting the world on fire both in terms of its reputation as a terrifying motion picture and a return on investment, the original 2007 found footage movie quickly expanded into a sprawling franchise that now includes multiple members of Katie’s extended family, more than half a dozen movies of varying quality, and a timeline that even Christopher Nolan would say was too complicated.

Need a primer on the lore behind the Paranormal Activity franchise? Check out our HORROR 101 article here!

The Entire Paranormal Activity Franchise Ranked

How varying is that quality, you ask? Well I’m glad you spoke up, because I happen to have the ultimate, definitive ranking of the franchise prepared for you right here, so why don’t we take a look…

#7 Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021)

It’s hard enough for an installment to be a six-years-later, direct-to-streaming, continuity-light movie in a deeply interconnected franchise that used to have entries hit theaters like clockwork. Unfortunately, this movie made it even harder on itself by spitting on its own found footage conceit at every turn, haphazardly cutting to different, impossible camera angles and frequently incorporating non-diegetic music that breaks the reality of the franchise at every possible turn.

#6 Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)

For six years, The Ghost Dimension stood as the purest example of how to misunderstand what to do with the Paranormal Activity franchise before Next of Kin came and ate its lunch. It largely ignores the franchise’s established characters and storylines in favor of nonsensical world-building slathered in a 3D gimmick that doesn’t work even a bit. However, it is set at Christmas, which does give it a little bump over Next of Kin, because one thing that almost every horror fan seems to be hard-wired to appreciate is a movie that can be used as subversive seasonal viewing.

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#5 Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

Paranormal Activity 4 is goofy. The front-and-center use of an XBOX Kinect camera dates the movie something fierce, even more than the installments that are explicit period pieces. While it is the last of the “pure” Paranormal Activity movies, it ultimately suffers from severely diminishing returns and doesn’t seem to have an idea of how to continue the ongoing story of the franchise in a satisfying way, or one that makes all that much sense.

#4 Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

While this is hardly an issue more than a decade after the fact, Paranormal Activity 3 is a case study in how disappointing a movie can be when all the good parts from the trailer end up on the cutting room floor before the finished product actually hits theaters. This installment is the hardest to objectively rank. The oscillating fan camera provides one of the best scare sequences in the franchise, certainly. However, the fact that the movie has so many conspicuously pulled punches should still count against it, and the finale sets up a narrative throughline that, while promising, never really pans out in a satisfying way in future installments.

#3 Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)

The Marked Ones is proof positive that focusing on characters who aren’t related to Katie can indeed work out, if you can actually find something unique to do with them. It has a similar structure to the franchise outing Curse of Chucky, actively eschewing continuity until it reveals that it is very much in continuity, to the delight of many fans. However, with or without the franchise connections, the movie is a jack-in-the-box thrill ride filled with engaging characters that puts a unique spin on the franchise’s core premise and shakes some of the doldrums out of a series that was already showing its age at that point in its run.

#2 Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

Paranormal Activity 2 is the platonic ideal of a Paranormal Activity sequel. It ups the ante considerably. More people in the house, more cameras, higher stakes (there’s a baby in peril). However, it still takes its time and utilizes the original movie’s patented slow, slow burn, not overindulging the audience with whiz-bang effects. It still primarily lets your imagination fill in the gaps of what’s going on in the lurking shadows of this suburban home.

#1 Paranormal Activity (2007)

Look, there’s a reason this movie made more money than a gym membership office on New Year’s Day. It’s extraordinarily effective at every single thing that it’s doing, from the small stuff, like presenting you with a believable suburban couple, to the big stuff, like setting Ouija boards aflame and chucking bodies through the air as you watch a series of seemingly minor unsettling happenings rip that couple apart before your very eyes. The movie is the ultimate home invasion, not only violating the ways we are supposed to feel safe in our own homes, but causing the very laws of physics, logic, and human behavior that govern that safe space to betray us.

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Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the  Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can also find his full-length movie reviews on Alternate Ending and his personal blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.

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The Best Horror You Can Stream on Shudder in February 2025

The Shudder February lineup is after my heart. Obviously, the app is adding more 2024 titles like The Dead Thing and Little Bites. However, they are also adding so many cool movies I have been dying to make my friends watch these last few years. There are some films guaranteed to make some heads roll alongside some cute vampire rom-coms hitting the horror streamer this month, and I cannot wait to revisit each title. Check out the five movies I’m highlighting this year, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! So here are the best movies to stream on Shudder this February!

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The Shudder February lineup is after my heart. Obviously, the app is adding more 2024 titles like The Dead Thing and Little Bites. However, they are also adding so many cool movies I have been dying to make my friends watch these last few years. There are some films guaranteed to make some heads roll alongside some cute vampire rom-coms hitting the horror streamer this month, and I cannot wait to revisit each title. Check out the five movies I’m highlighting this year, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! 

The Best Movies to Stream on Shudder This Month

The Coffee Table (2022)

A couple of new parents experiencing a rough patch decide to buy a coffee table, not knowing that the decision will alter their lives forever. The Coffee Table was one of my favorite movies of last year, and it is one of those titles you want to know as little as possible when you hit play. It is the bleakest and most stressful comedy I have seen in years, and I love it. This one goes out to my fellow sickos (complimentary). Please watch it the day it hits Shudder before the internet can ruin it for you.

You can watch The Coffee Table on February 24th.

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Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2024)

A young vampire who is too sensitive to kill for her supper meets a young loner with suicidal tendencies. What starts as a transactional relationship soon blossoms into an unexpected friendship. This movie is much cuter than I like my vampire movies. However, it is still a nice time for those looking to fill the void left by What We Do in the Shadows ending. It’s also not the worst romantic horror movie we have ever seen. I had very few notes for it in my review, and I know it made it onto quite a few top 10 lists of last year. 

You can watch Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person on February 10th.

My Animal (2023)

An outcast falls for a new girl in her small town, which makes it difficult to keep her darkest secret hidden. My Animal is a severely overlooked lesbian werewolf tale. It has been stuck in streamer purgatory for years, so finally finding a streaming home is a big deal. This moody story stars Bobbi Salvör Menuez and Amandla Stenberg and deserves your attention. It belongs somewhere between Ginger Snaps and Good Manners in the women werewolves we must celebrate. Make this feral love story a date night this winter, preferably during a full moon. 

You can watch My Animal on February 1st.

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Nightsiren (2022)

A woman returns to her birthplace, searching for answers to questions about her childhood. However, she is met with ancient superstitions and a community accusing her of witchcraft and murder. Nightsiren has been on my radar for a couple of years and is the only movie I have not seen. I love that Shudder is letting me find out if it’s as good as it looks this February. Worst-case scenario, I can say that I watched a Slovak-Czech feminist psychological horror this month, and that feels like a win.

You can watch Nightsiren on February 10th.

Tiger Stripes (2024)

An 11-year-old discovers the body horror of puberty as her body begins to change. Gothic horror is out, and menstruation is in because Tiger Stripes is the kind of period horror we need more of in the world. I fell for this cute little movie during a festival a couple of years ago and am so glad it has finally made its way to Shudder. It’s funny and very relatable. It is also a new genre entry destigmatizing the menses, and we need more movies in this subgenre. So, while you should watch it with as many people as possible, it’s also a delightful brunch body horror moment. 

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You can watch Tiger Stripes on February 24th.

It seems like Shudder has read my diary and added titles that I need the rest of you to see. I hope you check out these tales of lesbian werewolves, fun period horror, and everything between this February. You truly deserve cool new stories by cool new filmmakers, and that is exactly what the streamer is giving us almost weekly this month. What a time to be a subscriber! 

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Revisiting The Stepfather Films (And The Insane Real Crime Spree That Inspired Them)

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We all have one person in our lives who carries everything on their backs. It could be a family member whose work ethic shocks everyone around them or a friend juggling dozens of projects at once and still managing to get everything done just right. Thankless individuals who go unrecognized, but sometimes, that person ends up getting the spotlight they deserve.

To me, the Stepfather series is the perfect example of that in cinematic terms.  

The Stepfather, directed by Joseph Ruben in 1987, is the first in a small franchise of horror films that feels pretty forgotten in the grand scheme of 80s slashers and thrillers. But the film is a really interesting study of how one actor can take a role and make it their own, in a way that’s so compelling it makes you want to see more of that character even when the movies he’s in are kind of mediocre.

ODDLY MEMORABLE FOR A FORGOTTEN FRANCHISE

As the cultural conversation of the era has turned into a lot of circular discourse about how much better effects were back then and how unproven concepts made it to the screen more often, it should be easy to forget a psychological horror film with such a simple premise: what if your stepfather you hated was actually a freaky serial killer who was going to take your family out? From that premise sprung an unexpectedly great film, carried entirely by its lead actor.

I have a weird connection to The Stepfather because it was written by Richard Stark, who wrote one of my favorite crime stories of all time: The Hunter. I didn’t even know Richard Stark was only a pseudonym until I watched The Stepfatherand discovered it was writer Donald E. Westlake’s pen name. And Westlake’s proficiency with crime fiction translates here smoothly, because he took a horrifying real-life story of absolute evil (straight out of Westfield, New Jersey) and brought it to the screen with a true-to-life character.

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THE CRIMINAL BEHIND THE STEPFATHER SERIES

The real-life killer behind The Stepfather films was John List. To most people, he was a family man, living the dream with his wife and three children. He was a banker, hard-working and clean living, on the outside at least. He had a close relationship with many of the people in the Lutheran church he attended every Sunday, and was well-liked. But in reality, List was about to become one of the most infamous mass murderers in American history.

Behind the scenes, List was struck with financial trouble after financial trouble that exacerbated his already worsening mental health problems. A number of layoffs and setbacks left him and his family teetering on the brink of poverty despite the fact they lived in a 19-room mansion (I couldn’t even begin to explain how that works, don’t ask). List’s relationship with his wife was damaged by her spending habits, alcoholism, and deteriorating mental state due to untreated syphilis.  

He was left to “raise” three children, whom he was verbally and physically abusive to; his daughter Patricia even warned her drama coach that she was certain her father was going to kill her. Then her father actually sat all the kids down and told them they should prepare to die. And eventually, Patricia, her mother and grandmother, and both of her brothers became List’s victims in 1971.

List left his car in long-term parking at JFK International and disappeared with almost nothing in his name. Leaving a confession for his pastor behind in the form of a letter, it took weeks for neighbors to report the family’s disappearance, thanks to List’s meticulous planning. He had already slipped through the hands of the police by running from state to state, before eventually settling down into a new persona: Robert Clark. He eventually “fell in love” with a woman named Delores Miller, and the two moved to Virginia together soon after that.

Their relationship ended abruptly after an episode of America’s Most Wanted aired, in which famous forensic artist Frank Bender made an incredibly accurate sculpt of what List looked like at the time. After years of close calls and narrow captures, List was discovered. It took 17 and a half years for List to be caught. He was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences and died in jail in 2008.

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THE ACTOR WHO GAVE LIFE TO THE STEPFATHER SERIES

Now, I mention all of this above to punctuate one thing: The Stepfather isn’t the only fictionalized retelling of List’s story, but it is the most effective. Its opening scene is a gruesome recounting of List’s disaffected disappearance, how he slipped off to freedom, to an alternate life of his own design for nearly two decades, with little emotion at all. It opens on a mystery—what kind of man is he, if he is human at all? How does one simply walk away from a crime scene so calm and collected?

Because at the heart of the List case is the intensely intriguing and horrifying persona that is John List. To adapt that kind of personality, that deeply unhinged and deceptive person, is the kind of acting challenge many actors would pounce on immediately. And for horror fans, an unlikely hero stepped up to the plate: Terry O’Quinn. He’s best known for playing John Locke on the show Lost, but he’s also a quintessential “that one guy” character actor; he’s been in so many films and television shows you can probably throw a dart in any direction and hit his filmography.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call the first two Stepfather movies iconic (entertaining, definitely). Still, our main man Terry O’Quinn is incredibly iconic in his performance of Jerry Blake. O’Quinn really does enthrall you, and he’s an actor to beat when it comes to depicting someone slowly unraveling and releasing bursts of madness along the way like solar flares on a star’s surface. And I don’t just say that because he bears a bizarre resemblance to an older Anthony Starr.

He even almost tricks you into thinking Jerry’s moments of manufactured sweetness and maudlin family-man aesthetic are genuine, but then you remember what you’re watching and go right back to hating him with a passion. He is a quintessential horror movie villain because you despise him, but you’re transfixed by him.

He’s an emotionally disturbed con man, a parasite who can worm his way into a new skin with sociopathic ease. And when it all comes crashing down, to the point where even he isn’t sure what role he’s supposed to play for his fake family, its fantastic. With a line as simple as, “Wait a minute, who am I here?”, O’Quinn cemented himself as the definitive depiction of the character.

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WHY EACH OF THE STEPFATHER FILMS IS WORTH WATCHING

As I said, these films are far from perfect, but each one brings something a little new and different to the table. It’s fun to see O’Quinn return to the role in Stepfather 2, playing opposite of the legendary Caroline Williams and Meg Foster; a psycho-slasher finale at a wedding is just hard to beat. Stepfather 3 brings a surprisingly good changing of hands to the title role, though, since despite O’Quinn being replaced by Robert Wightman, Wightman brings just the right kind of energy to the role; he’s the perfect fit for the much campier and goofier tone of the 3rd film, and I was honestly very impressed with how he brought the role to life. But be warned: don’t bother with the remake. It is borderline bloodless, and incredibly boring. You can put a million Penn Badgley’s in that film, I’m not watching it again.

The Stepfather films aren’t anyone’s favorite of the many horror fans I’ve met and spoken with. But they are a capsule of how one artist can have enough staying power to keep them in your mind. So, for all my people out there who are going to check the trilogy out now thanks to this article: happy watching horror fans, and have fun!

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