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“We’re not going to grind this horror franchise into the ground.” That’s Jason Blum on the Paranormal Activity series, the first installment of which broke him out as one of today’s most prominent and prolific producers, particularly of scary movies. The final installment, by this claim, is titled Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, and it’s hitting theaters this October.
Speaking to USA Today, Blum also promised that the sequel will conclude in a proper way, tying up all loose ends to truly put the franchise to bed. “What does Toby look like? What’s the backstory to the families? These questions have been teased out. Now they will be answered,” he stated.
There could be a reboot down the line, of course, but The Ghost Dimension is the end of this run, and it’s going out with a bang. The upcoming movie, which is the sixth Paranormal Activity installment, will feature some sequences in 3D, making its budget a tad costlier than the rest of them. Specifically, these isolated sequences will be footage seen through a video camera found in the home of a new bunch of characters, who make up the Fleege family.
You can meet this new clan, which will of course be haunted by posessed franchise regular Katie (played again by Katie Featherton and young Chloe Csengery), in the new teaser below.
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The full first trailer will be online later, but this is a good taste of the latest, plenty creepy with little Leila Fleege (Ivy George) repeating “Bloody Mary” in reverse over and over. It’s the modern day equivalent of the kid in The Shining saying “redrum.” Check out some more glimpses at this final Paranormal Activity movie in the additional new images below.
The sequel arrives in theaters on October 23, 2015.
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Instagram’s latest update features curated photo collections and trending tags. Instagram hide caption
itoggle caption Instagram
Consider yourself warned: Instagram rolled out an update Tuesday, and the photo-sharing app may be about to eat up a lot more of your time.
More substantial than other recent makeovers touting new filters, this change will transform Instagram into a stream of real-time updates from around the country. Following in the footsteps of Twitter and Facebook, Instagram wants to be a source for your news.
Instagram has historically not been a good venue for news — it’s more a source for brunch envy and jealousy of your friend’s Tulum vacation. But within minutes of looking at the Explore tab of the updated app, I saw Patriots fans staked out outside of NFL offices in support of Tom Brady, tributes to James Horner and new album releases.
Instead of painstakingly searching for images of the U.S. women’s World Cup victory on Instagram after learning about the news elsewhere, Instagram will be its own source of visual news.
“This is our North Star — what we’ve been shooting for all along,” Kevin Systrom, Instagram co-founder and CEO, told Wired in an interview. “It’s a real-time visual pulse for what is happening in the world.”
The update also makes it easier to find quality content from other users. A rotating banner at the top of the explore page offers to usher me to curated collections of beautiful rock formations, extreme athletes, trending places, and even shows me a collection of NBA players to follow.
Additionally, new search features will begin to ease the headache of looking for information on Instagram. Users can now search by location, and searching for a hashtag now shows high-quality “top posts” in addition to the most recent posts, meaning the days of searching for the hashtag #nyc and finding only hundreds of spammy, unrelated posts are hopefully on their way out.
In short, the new features will draw users away from looking only at the feed of people they follow and redirect them to more easily connect with users — and advertisers — around the world.
More clicks on centralized, curated content will likely make way for more formats in which advertisers can place targeted content. Instagram announced three weeks ago that it was working to include more action-oriented formats for its advertisers. Instead of merely a pretty photo, users will be able to buy or learn more about advertised products. Using parent company Facebook’s data, Instagram also announced it will focus more on letting advertisers reach users based on demographics and interests.
Instagram’s move follows that of other social media giants. In January, Snapchat announced a publishing partnership with the likes of CNN, ESPN and Vice. Facebook caused a recent stir by announcing its Instant Articles feature, and its News Feed feature has been a longtime source of news and trends for its users. But perhaps the new Instagram features compete most directly with Twitter, the hashtag pioneer itself.
At a time when Twitter feeds have progressively filled with more photos, Instagram’s new features put the two services head to head in competition. Already, both companies have a similar number of users. Instagram announced it had 300 million users in December, while Twitter reported 302 million worldwide users this month.
As Twitter deals with a CEO change and identity crisis, it will be interesting to see how the two companies compete.
Lauren Leatherby is an intern on NPR’s Washington Desk.
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