The new Paranormal Activity sequel now has a cast, and in keeping with the franchise’s tradition, it’s made up of actors you probably aren’t very familiar with. Emily Bader, Roland Buck III, Dan Lippert, and Henry Ayres-Brown are all on board the film, which comes from Happy Death Day franchise writer Christopher Landon and Underwater director Will Eubank. Details remain rather vague, but the new Paranormal Activity movie will debut exclusively on Paramount+.

The Wrap broke the news on the new Paranormal Activity cast, revealing that Emily Bader (Charmed), Roland Buck III (Chicago Med), Dan Lippert (The Grand Slams), and Henry Ayres-Brown (The Blacklist) are all appearing in the film. And if I’m being honest, I have to say I haven’t heard of any of these performers. But that’s nothing new: the original Paranormal Activity featured virtually unknown actors, and most of the sequels followed suit. It’s kind of baked into the premise – if you cast well-known actors in a found footage movie it immediately ruins the illusion that what we’re watching is supposed to be “real.”

Of course, we don’t know for sure if the new Paranormal Activity will be a found footage movie. It seems likely since every previous entry in the series has used this format, but you never know how these things are going to shake out. For now, let’s all assume the film will once again involve people filming themselves in a haunted house.

The Paranormal Activity franchise kicked off in 2007 with the first film, which was written and directed by Oren Peli and starred Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat. A great marketing campaign that hyped up how scary the film was helped turn it into a massive success – it reportedly cost only $15,000 to film and ended up hauling in $193.4 million worldwide. When a horror movie does numbers like that, a sequel is inevitable. Sure enough, several follow-ups continued the story, weaving often needlessly complicated mythology. There was Paranormal Activity 2 in 2010, Paranormal Activity 3 in 2011, Paranormal Activity 4 in 2012, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones in 2014, and Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension in 2015.

The new film comes from director Will Eubank, who helmed the surprisingly good aquatic horror film Underwater, and screenwriter Christopher Landon. Landon is the writer behind the Happy Death Day franchise, and he also directed both of those films. He recently helmed the excellent body-swap horror-comedy Freaky. But he also has a history with the Paranormal Activity franchise, having written the scripts for Paranormal Activity 2, 3, 4, and Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, which he also directed.

This upcoming seventh entry was previously announced for a March 4, 2022 release. Whether or not that release date holds remains to be seen, but when the film does arrive, it’ll be going straight to Paramount+.

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