How To Watch The Paranormal Activity Movies In Order

This post contains spoilers for the "Paranormal Activity" franchise.

When "Paranormal Activity" was first released in 2007, it was a small-scale, indie found-footage endeavor spearheaded by Oren Peli, shot with an initial budget of around $15,000. After the feature made some waves and was acquired by Paramount, the trajectory of this horror offering, which was initially meant as a standalone entry, changed forever. Now armed with a new alternate ending, "Paranormal Activity" had an unbelievably lucrative run at the box office, and this overwhelming success went on to spawn a highly profitable franchise with stories that sported interconnected timelines and a shared found footage convention. Although the first few entries feel fresh and effective, a case of franchise fatigue can be felt over time, especially with the most recent soft reboot, "Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin."

It is perfectly okay to watch the "Paranormal Activity" films (check out our ranking of them here) according to release order, as the chronological back and forth starts to make sense once you're done watching all of them, like a convoluted puzzle on the verge of completion. But if you want to experience the story as it occurs in a linear fashion, you might have to shuffle the watch order just a little bit. Here's the order the films were released: "Paranormal Activity," "Paranormal Activity 2," "Paranormal Activity 3," "Paranormal Activity 4," "Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones," "Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension," and "Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin."

No matter how you choose to experience the franchise, the 2007 film will always emerge as the most potent, visceral entry that genuinely understands how to leverage human anxieties surrounding surveillance and implied terror. There is a latent sense of unease embedded into the late hours of the night when everyone inside a house is fast asleep, and the night unravels with unexplained creaks or blink-and-you-miss-it shadows near doorways. The only witness is a camera capturing these subtle sources of terror, along with an audience who feel apprehension on behalf of characters who remain oblivious to the entity that haunts them.

Instead of starting with Peli's 2007 gamechanger, begin with 2011's "Paranormal Activity 3," which takes place during the earliest point on the main timeline and revolves around a younger Katie (Katie Featherston) and Kristi (Sprague Grayden), who live with their mother in California. This is when Kristi first begins communicating with an imaginary friend, Tobi, and supernatural events occur, each more concerning than the one before. This is the inception of the use of cameras to capture paranormal anomalies around the house (from a chronological standpoint), and to no one's surprise, the events end in unspeakable tragedy.

Next, check out 2010's "Paranormal Activity 2," which is set in August 2006, only two months before the events of the 2007 original. A burglary sets off the unnerving chain of events in this entry, prompting the need to set up security cameras around the house, which allows us to witness how the central characters are slowly gripped by paralyzing fear. People are bitten and possessed by unknown entities, time travel shenanigans occur, and a couple of murders take place towards the end. Although the story does not explore anything novel if you watch it in release order, following this chronological order allows you to experience it from an altered perspective, where the events of "Paranormal Activity 2" help set the stage for the first film.

Now it's time to watch "Paranormal Activity," which explores Katie moving into a new house with her husband Micah (Micah Sloat), who gleefully sets up cameras around the house because of a need to document everything. The initial sentiment is that of excitement, as the married couple views this as a fresh start, but this tender hope gradually gives way to terror, culminating in one of the best jump scares that the series has to offer. The lurking fear in this story leads the viewers down some unpredictable paths, as it is hard to anticipate how extreme things get during the anxiety-inducing final stretch.

Move on to 2012's "Paranormal Activity 4," which takes place in November 2011 and zooms in on the hauntings experienced by Alex Nelson (Kathryn Newton) and her family, which ties in with the fact that Katie and her son Robbie move in across the street. Apart from analog cameras, the film employs webcams and iPhones to capture some of the supernatural events, making it clear that well-crafted scares can be effective on any device used to capture them, and that the modernity of digital cameras does not subtract anything from the experience. After this, just stick with the standard release order: 2014's "Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones" followed by 2015's "Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension" and 2021's "Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin."

By the time the fifth film rolls around, the premise starts to feel stale, as the overarching structure of the narrative remains the same, with the cameras framing the horrors that stem from Tobi. Unless the story is supplemented with intriguing characters or a visual direction that subverts franchise expectations, each new entry is bound to feel like a variation of the same tropes and outcomes, with dull mundanity replacing the grounded horror that the series is known for. "Next of Kin" attempts something different as a standalone feature, but the results are too muddled and have extremely vague connections to the primary tale, with the horror aspect retreading tired genre tropes about evil cults and demonic entities that infect the populace with a contagious brand of fear.

In case you want even more "Paranormal Activity," you can check out the non-canon "Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night," which functions as a sequel to the 2007 film and focuses on Haruka (Noriko Aoyama), who returns home and experiences a haunting alongside her brother Koichi (Aoi Nakamura). Aspects of Japanese folklore are incorporated to deepen the context behind the entity's hauntings, and this entry underlines the influence that the original had on a global level and how it inspired a spirited reinterpretation of something inimitable.