How the ‘Paranormal Activity’ franchise found its finale

“Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension” is the final chapter in the “Paranormal Activity” anthology. And after years of terrorizing young couples inside their suburban homes and open-concept kitchens, it’s time to close the book on the demon Toby and his evil coven. But how do you end a Halloween classic? We asked finale film director Gregory Plotkin.

Plotkin joined the “Paranormal Activity” franchise at the second installment as editor and has since worked on every “PA” film to come out. And now he’s taken the role of director to help land the legacy horror franchise, hopefully appeasing fans and the demon Toby as well.

Which “Paranormal Activity” is your favorite “Paranormal Activity?”

Gregory Plotkin: Tough question. The second one, it’s the first one I went on, and I just have such fond memories of what we were able to pull off in that one. The first one is a classic. Just personally, two was the most rewarding and the most fun, just because we were all learning how to do it as we went.

Why do you think this franchise became such a staple in horror?

At the time we came out, there was a lot of gore, there was a lot of torture porn kind of horror. I think people were just ready for something new. The wonderful thing about our franchise is Oren [Peli, producer] kept it really low-fi. There was no blood. It was fairly simple. It took what was completely mundane, which was our own home, our own lives, and turned it upside-down and made it scary. I think every film we try to build on that. We try to find something that is, again, common to everybody. Something that is close to their home, if you will, and make it scary. We haven’t betrayed that in the films. We’ve always kept it that same aesthetic. Also, we created this mythology.

You’ve worked on “Paranormal Activity” two, three and four, and “The Marked Ones.” How do you find the right story for ghost dimension? What’s new about this movie that we haven’t seen already in the other ones?

The great thing about this one is you’re finally seeing what caused the activities. As I was cutting all the other films, I always just told myself a story. We always had a script. We always had an idea of what was happening, but sometimes it was, “Hey, this window’s going to open on it’s own, or there’s going to be a boom here,” or whatever. As an editor, to have a point of view, and to really get into a scene, I was always telling myself a story. “Toby was doing this, or there’s a demon doing this, or this was happening.” The fun thing about this one, that makes it different, is how to find an angle in was to finally be able to show that. To find what happened to this special camera that lets you see [the demon] and lets you actually live in the dimension where the demonic activity happens. That was the fun thing. Those were all the stories that I had in my head for the last four or five years that I was able to finally get out onto the screen.

I think that’s really what makes it unique. For this franchise it’s been kind of what you didn’t see, the challenge was, how do you not betray the fans, how do you not betray what we’ve done by showing all this stuff, and how do you make it interesting and how do you make it fun? I’m really proud of it. I think we’ve been able to achieve it. That was the big thing. I think showing, finally, what was going on and answering the questions for people.

How did you come to the conclusion that you were going to integrate spirit photography into this film? Was that already in the works, or how did that come about, and how did you go about deciding how that would look?

Spirit photography sort of evolved, because we always started with the idea of the camera. Started with the idea of the tapes and the camera being the vehicle to show us another dimension. As we researched it felt very natural to get into spirit photography. It was really just one of those natural things that we sort of fell into. I don’t know that any of us had specifically set out with the idea of, “We know this is culminating in spirit photography.”

In terms of how we were going to make it look, that we did a lot of research on. What I didn’t want to do was a lot of spirit photography that I’ve already seen. That has these sort of ghostly images. Old black-and-white images, especially, where you see the sort of haunted image in the background. I felt like I’d seen that a lot before. It felt like that was played out. Although scary, and great, I just didn’t want to necessarily do that. I do love the idea that there are these devices, these cameras, that just give you a sense of another realm. Given the fact that we’re seeing this full dimension, it was important to create the look we created for the film out of it.

How did you come to the decision to make on what the character of Toby would look like, you made him look real and organic, and more rooted. It looks like [the demon] builds upon itself. How did you come to the conclusion of what Toby would look like on this camera?

We’ve always had this idea that the demon gains power throughout each of the films. The demon always started out like a child, like a baby. The more attention you give it, the more fear you show, the larger it gets. I started with that idea in this film, where when you first see it, it’s a blob. It’s shapeless. You don’t know what it is. It has yet to sort of cause fear in the house….That was really the evolution of it all here. It was working with my artists, working with ILM. “Hey, let’s figure out the six stages of Toby, and then figure out how we can represent those in film.”

Where do you go from here? Do you keep the door open for more? Did the studio tell you when you were making this, “You’ve got to keep the door open a little, or is this really, truly the end of ”Paranormal Activity?”

Look, the studio has said that this is the last of the franchise, unless somebody reboots it sometime down the road. That would be great. I have dreams that my kid will some day edit or direct one of these movies. I think with any franchise, there’s always going to be a question [if there are additional storylines you think you could potentially explore]. But we didn’t make this one thinking, “Hey, we’re leaving this one open specifically for an off-shoot or another film.” We just tried to answer as many of the core questions as we could. If a few years down the road somebody wants to reboot it and answer some of those questions, or start over, that’s another conversation, but we didn’t purposely leave anything open right now to try to bait the audience into seeing another one. We’re committed to closing the franchise right now.

What is the meeting like when you’re closing this franchise? Is there a big meeting with long predictions and idea? It’s such a huge property for everyone, were there a lot of different discussions about how they were going to close it out?

There were. We had a core team from the beginning. Obviously, Jason [Blum] and Oren from the beginning. Also, Ashley Brucks, who is the creative executive from the studio. She’s been on it since day one. Adam Goodman, who was the president of the studio, the franchise has always been his baby. He was on it from day one. We’ve always had discussion about what the evolution is. We added some conversation. This was sort of the culmination of a lot of conversations, and then obviously we had a ton while we were making this. It wasn’t just Jason, it wasn’t just Oren. It was Ashley, it was myself, it was the writers, the studio. We all decided that this what what we wanted to do. Yeah, we did struggle a little bit, I think like any filmmaker would, as to how we wanted to do it. We tried a couple things. This is what felt best to us. It’s very much a group effort with these films, which is fun. We all love it. We all know our bible of the paranormal franchise. We just sort of culled all the information we had and figured out how to end it.

What were some of the ideas you guys thew out that didn’t end up making it into the movie on how to end it?

We tried anything… We just tried a lot of things. We tried some happier endings, we tried some scarier endings. We just tried a whole bunch of things to see what felt the most natural. I think the great thing was, we just ended up going back to what was important to us, what had been important to the fans, who Toby is, what’s the end game for Toby? What does this coven want? We just ended up going back to what was sort of the core value of our mythology. That’s really what helped us.

“Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension” is in theaters now.