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.
#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.