Underwhelming, the second half gets dumb FAST and disappoints

Rating: 4/10 (4 May 2020)

Well... I thought it was nice that they showed the demons, especially the shot in full lighting at the table. Other than that... this fell way short of expectations.
Honestly, just save your time and read the below.
I was interested the first half and was excited to see where it was going to go... that all ended abruptly once the ghost hunting team showed up, one of them with a hot pocket in hand. The way these two were written as overly exaggerated ghost hunting clichÃ©s just didn't feel correct to the tone of the movie, and were just so bad it really took me out of the movie at that point. One right brain, one left brained, always arguing over who was more important to the team which made them feel like bumbling amateurs or beginners, not seasoned hunters that would be needed for a case such as this. They were supposed to be comic relief, but their jokes were really bad, on the nose, obvious, lazy and confused the tone. They ruined the tension in the second half. Enter the clairvoyant type character. She was a bit over dramatic, but was much more plateable than the rest of her team. Which also made one wonder, again, why she would have herself be represented by such bumbling idiots. Regardless, shortly after she appeared, it was revealed that she knew the Dad because.... THE SAME THING HAPPENED TO HIM AS A CHILD. Wow.... What a weak reveal and twist.... Now it's painfully obvious that the father will re-learn how to astral project so that he can go do battle with demons and save his child........ So dumb! I was over the movie at this point and was not looking forward to the resolution. Cheesy and dumb, and just took it too far. The root of the evil should have been grounded in something a bit more tangible than astral projection. My problem wasn't really the astral projection, it was more the whole thing where the dad went through the same thing, but his memory was wiped, so he had to do it to save his son was just really corny and the movie really wasn't scary after that. It'd been ruined. Also, the full reveal of the main demon creature was a bit disappointing. Kind of like a hooved Darth Maul, but he really needed to be much bigger and more menacing. At LEAST taller and more akin to his Nosferatu-esque shadow that appears earlier. All in all, their other efforts with the Paranormal Activity series are much more tense, they fall apart near the end too, but the tone was certainly more even throughout those movies. Still... the scariest and most frightening films I've ever seen are foreign. American's tend to pull their punches and go for the broad appeal or movies that lend themselves to franchises and multiple sequels.