Do you have to watch the other Paranormal Activity movies before Next of Kin?

When Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin arrives on Paramount+ on Oct. 29, 2021, it marks the beginning of a new era for the found footage franchise that had people jumping out of their seats in theaters when the original movie debuted in 2007. So do you need to watch the other Paranormal Activity movies before watching Next of Kin?

According to producer Jason Blum, Next of Kin is a reboot so technically you don’t need to watch the other movies to understand what’s going on. However, there is some clarity to be found in the earlier movies that helps to explain the filming style, since all of the movies use the “found footage” style that was made popular after The Blair Witch Project.

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin producer says franchise had to be rebooted

In an interview with Collider, Blum says that Paramount expressed interest in more movies but he believed that they needed a whole new direction.

"“So they wanted to continue it, but I thought if they were gonna continue it, you gotta – it was tired, there was no way to continue the road that we’d been down.”"

He also pointed out that the target audience was barely out of diapers when the first movie premiered, which also made a complete reboot necessary.

Next of Kin is the story of a young woman who is trying to understand what happened to her mother. Her search leads her to Amish country, and that’s when things start to go sideways as she learns the terrifying truth.

One of the things that makes Paranormal Activity such an enduring franchise is how the movies adapted to new technology. From clunky video cameras to sleek MacBook cameras and in-home security cameras, and even the camera on a video game console, the movies made the most of new technology so that every shot is derived from a camera within the movie, rather than being filmed in a traditional sense.

With Next of Kin, Paramount hopes to see the birth of a new franchise and with Blum and franchise creator Oren Peli working behind the scenes on the new movie it’s entirely possible that Next of Kin will give the franchise a fresh new start.

Watch Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin on Oct. 29, 2021, streaming only on Paramount+.