Though director William Eubank’s Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is meant to be a narrative reboot separate from the overarching tale established in the original films, the movie’s latest trailer definitely makes it seem like the new story’s going to have quite a few unsettling details in common with its predecessors.
With every instalment of Paramount and Blumhouse’s original Paranormal Activity franchise, its initially simple-seeming story about a family being haunted by a demon morphed into a much more sinister, complicated tale involving witchcraft, cults, and a focus on the idea of people not being who they seem. Next of Kin’s new trailer introduces Margot (Emily Bader), an adoptee who sets off on a journey with her friends in search of her biological family — and finds her way into a remote village populated by people living according to an old-world religious culture.
After the locals welcome Margot and her friends warmly, they can’t help but take note of the eeriness of the place, and how people seem to believe that Margot’s (presumed) long-lost mother is still living there. The more Margot begins to look into whether or not her the suspicious things she hears people whispering about her are true, the more evident the town’s cultishness becomes to her and everyone else from the outside world. Because this is a Paranormal Activity movie, though, there is something legitimately supernatural hiding behind this Midsommar-esque mystery, and Margot somehow manages to catch quite a bit of it on her own personal camera.
While Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin certainly looks like it has the potential to be one of the franchise’s more interesting chapters, the trailer’s an example of a studio perhaps giving too much of its story away for fear that audiences might not want to bother sitting down to watch a feature they weren’t prepared for.
Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin also stars Roland Buck III, Jill Andre, Tom Nowicki, Gunner Wright, Kyli Zion, Dan Lippert, Henry Ayres-Brown, Wesley Han, and Colin Keane. The movie hits Paramount+ on October 29.