Henry Joost And Ariel Schulman Returning For 'Paranormal Activity 4;' Where Will The Story Go?

When Paramount announced they'd hired Catfish directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman to direct Paranormal Activity 3, the world of film collectively rolled their eyes. Then the film came out and the duo gouged those eyes out. Joost and Schulman knocked the film out of the park (read my review here), turned a major profit and left a ton of places for the fourth film to go. Now they'll be the ones to take it there.

After the recent news that Paranormal Activity 4 will be released on October 19, it has now been revealed Joost and Schulman will return as directors, this time with several more months to prepare. Where will the movie go? We speculate and more after the jump.

Bloody Disgusting exclusively broke the news of the film's returning directors. They don't have any additional information on what the film will focus on, but, we can speculate in one of two directions based on the third film.Spoilers follow for Paranormal Activity 1-3.

The first Paranormal Activity set the stage by showing a haunting in the house of a girl named Katie. The second film showed how that haunting came to be, originating in the house of her sister Kristi, and where a possessed Katie went after the end of the first movie. It was sort of a prequel tagged with sequel elements. Paranormal Activity 3 added a few seconds to the story of the second before jumping back to the 1980s when Katie and Kristi were pre-teens. There it showed them being haunted and revealed that it was because of the ritual beliefs of their grandmother.

So, knowing all that, the story of Paranormal Activity 4 will likely go one of two ways. Either it can go back in the past and show why Katie and Kristi's grandmother got all wacky or it can jump ahead (something I felt the third film was lacking) and explain what is going on with the now possessed Katie and her nephew, who she's kidnapped from her dead sister.

Since one of the obvious flaws with 3 was how forced the found footage aspect of the movie was (it was supposed to be shot on VHS tapes for hours and hours and hours on end) it would be all but impossible to do a found footage movie before the 1980s. More likely would be the continuation of Katie's story, somewhere out in the world, possessed as a demon. Plus that would mean Katie Featherston could return.

However, moving on from that, one of the staples of the franchise are the repeated angles from footage taken in the same room. If Katie is possessed out in the world, how would several weeks of her creepy actions be captured? That will be the task of the screenwriters and Joost/Schulman to decide but one friend of mine (I'd give you credit but I forget which one) had a brilliant suggestion: police interrogation footage.

Are you excited Joost and Schulman are back? Do you agree with my assessment of where Paranormal 4 will go?