'Paranormal Activity' Franchise Producer Calls Latest Film 'Terrible': 'It Has Been Enough Already'

Theo Wargo/Getty Jason Blum

The producer behind the Paranormal Activity franchise doesn’t think highly of the latest entry.

At the Locarno Film Festival, Jason Blum said, according to Variety, that the end is near for the series, which bolstered his company Blumhouse Productions with the low-budget 2007 original.

“It has been enough already. That last Paranormal Activity movie was terrible,” he said.

After the first found-footage-style Paranormal Activity, directed by Oren Peli, became a surprise hit — it reportedly cost just $15,000 to make and earned over $193 million at the worldwide box office — inspired several sequels, in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015.

This past October, a reboot titled Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin premiered debuted on Paramount+ from Underwater director William Eubank. Set on an Amish farm, the film started a new narrative and lore for the franchise, straying away from the main storyline of the previous installments. It starred Emily Bader, Roland Buck III, Dan Lippert and Jaye Ayres-Brown.

Reps for Eubank did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

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Courtesy Paramount Players Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (2021)

Through Blumhouse Productions, Blum, 53, has produced hits like Get Out,The Purge, Sinister and HBO’s Sharp Objects, plus recent releases like The Black Phone, They/Them, Firestarter and the Halloween sequels. The company’s ownership of that horror franchise concludes with this fall’s Halloween Ends, starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Blumhouse is also working on a reboot of The Exorcist.

“With Halloween, we only had the rights to three movies, so we said, ‘Halloween Ends!’ It ends for Blumhouse, at least. With other things, you just have this feeling it’s time to put them to bed,” Blum also said of deciding to end the Paranormal Activity series. “It would come back if some director I love, like Scott Derrickson, said: ‘I have a great idea for a Paranormal Activity movie. But it’s not something I want to do [right now].”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cyrhAScX80k%3Frel%3D0

Back in 2015, when Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (in 3D, no less) was touted as the “last” Paranormal Activity movie, Blum told IGN about concluding the franchise and giving fans answers.

“It felt like we posed a lot of questions and I was tired of doing that. There was a fatigue in the audience that was like, ‘Stop teasing us, we want answers.’ It’s hard to give answers and keep going so it felt like a natural time to wrap it up,” he said at the time. “Most horror franchises, they just stop when the last one doesn’t make any money. That’s just sad and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth about the whole series. I really didn’t want to do that with this.”

“Paramount was very agreeable to that notion. They came to the same conclusion themselves so we really are agreed about it. It’ll give Paranormal Activity a better cultural impact without grinding it into the ground.”

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