Margot (Emily Bader) was abandoned at the hospital as an infant.  She meets Sam (Henry Ayres-Brown) online, and they discover that they are related.  Margot decides to meet Sam in-person and make a documentary about the experience with cameraman Chris (Roland Buck III) and sound tech Dale (Dan Lippert).  When the crew arrives at the family homestead, strange things begin to happen as Margot grows closer to discovering the mysterious circumstances that led to her mother abandoning her as a baby. 

Next of Kin is the seventh installment in the modern found footage franchise Paranormal Activity, produced by Blumhouse and released as a Paramount+ exclusive.  Directed by William Eubank and written by Christopher Landon, the film takes a lot of liberties against the established “rules” of the low cost/high gross franchise.  Breaking free from the mold, on one hand, makes it a much better film standing on its own merits, but it does not fit quite as seamlessly into the Paranormal Activity catalog.  

The film takes place on an Amish farm and contains many of the staples of folk horror and does a pretty decent job at setting up the atmosphere.  It does take a little while to fall into place and get going as it is not until a scene towards the beginning of the second act when Margot sneaks up to the attic – her mother’s childhood room – when we have our first real scares.  Eubank, to his credit, does a really good job at building the tension of the moment and slowly cranking it up as the sequence continues, but he likes to linger so that audiences eventually become comfortable in these otherwise uneasy set pieces.  We are oftentimes waiting for scares that never come as Eubank is much more interested in setting the tone.  This is all well and good, but for a franchise that is known for its excessive jump scares, there are surprisingly few in Next of Kin. 

One of the other truly surprising things for this entry is the sheer amount of lore that surrounds and drives the narrative. Eubank takes a lot of the lore and folds it into the atmosphere without much expansion which is a shame, but when he does choose to highlight those plot points, it makes for some of the best moments of the film. It takes a long time before the film starts peeling back the layers to get to this point, but the design elements surrounding the malevolent forces at play are well worth the wait. This is where Next of Kin struggles most with its identity crisis: by breaking out from the simpler “home haunting” of the previous installments and into something larger in scale, the film has to constantly table its most interesting elements to fit better into the parameters set by its parent franchise. In that way, it feels very similar to Dan Trachtenberg’s 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) in that the majority of the film can stand as its own singular work but then is shoehorned into a franchise for the sake of marketing and brand awareness. 

Despite the rocky road to get there, the final act finds the film crew stranded and separated as everything comes to a head in an absolutely crazy final sequence. Watching the insanity unfold, even from the comfort of your couch, is akin to being dropped in the middle of a haunted hayride attraction at Halloween. Eubank’s camera sweeps wildly through the chaos coursing through the homestead and it is an absolute thrill to witness. Given his long history as a cinematographer, it makes sense that he can set up those kinds of shots in a beautifully haunting way, though Pedro Luque fills that role here and quite well. Eubank peppers in some scares to varying degrees of middling success here, but the real enjoyment comes in the form of the setting. The unsettling and haunting imagery that flashes before our eyes is the perfect ending to an imperfect film as all of the elements in Eubank’s carefully crafted environment finally have their moment of payoff all at once.  

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin learns the hard way that in trying to please everyone, oftentimes you will please no one. Given that the documentary footage – standing in for the found footage of which the franchise is known – is not very compelling or exciting, both fans of the franchise and horror fans in general will find long instances that are drawn out and somewhat boring. The last thing you want in a horror film is to be bored, and while it is hard to say that the ending of Next of Kin absolves the sins of the first two acts, it is nonetheless an enjoyable endcap that keeps Eubank on the list of rising talent to watch.