Underwater director Will Eubank’s reboot of the Paranormal Activity franchise will be available to watch through the Paramount Plus streaming service sometime in October, and today the Motion Picture Association revealed that they have given the film an R rating for “violence and bloody images, and language throughout“(via Film Ratings). By putting the movie in their ratings bulletin, the MPA also beat Paramount to announcing the title. This one is called Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin.
Every time I see the title Next of Kin, I think of the 1989 action movie with that title, which starred Patrick Swayze, Liam Neeson, and Bill Paxton. I can tell you I’d be a lot more interested in Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin if Swayze and Paxton were still around to star in it and be joined in the cast by Neeson.
Plot details on Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin are being kept under wraps, but we do know that the movie stars Emily Bader, Roland Buck III, Dan Lippert, and Henry Ayres-Brown. Franchise creator Oren Peli produced the film with Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions. Screenwriter Christopher Landon served as executive producer alongside Steven Schneider.
While this film has been described as an “unexpected retooling” of the franchise, Landon was a major part of the Paranormal Activity films that came before. He previously wrote the second, third, and fourth films, and also wrote and directed Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones.
All the movies in this franchise have been rated R… which is somewhat surprising to me. I drifted away from the series after part 3 and haven’t watched any of them in ten years, so I remembered them as being rather tame and uneventful.
We’ll let you know when Paramount announces a release date for Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin and gets the marketing started.