Franchise Guide · Found Footage

Paranormal Activity Movies in Order

Eight films, two of them prequels, one of them shot in Japan and skipped by almost every list. Here is the release order, the story order, and what the ratings say about where the series lost the thread.

WhatScares · August 2026 · Runtimes, directors and IMDb scores from IMDb's published datasets

There are eight released Paranormal Activity films: seven in the main American series and one licensed Japanese spin-off that most rankings quietly drop. They run from 83 to 98 minutes each, so the whole franchise is about eleven hours.

Every film, in release order

  1. 01

    Paranormal Activity 2007

    Dir. Oren Peli · 86 min · IMDb 6.3 (274,181 votes)

    The one that worked. Shot for a reported pittance in Peli’s own house, and still the highest-rated film in the series.

    WhatScares 4/5 jumps 1/5 gore 3/5 dread How scary is it →
  2. 02

    Paranormal Activity 2 2010

    Dir. Tod Williams · 91 min · IMDb 5.7 (116,531 votes)

    A prequel that wraps around the first film rather than following it — most of it happens before, and its last scenes happen after.

    Not in our catalog yet — we have not scored this one.
  3. spin-off

    Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night 2010

    Dir. Toshikazu Nagae · 90 min · IMDb 5.1 (6,089 votes)

    A licensed Japanese spin-off, released only in Japan and rarely counted. Included here because it exists, not because you need it.

    Not in our catalog yet — we have not scored this one.
  4. 03

    Paranormal Activity 3 2011

    Dir. Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman · 83 min · IMDb 5.8 (105,367 votes)

    The 1988-set prequel with the two sisters as children, and the oscillating-fan camera rig that is the best idea anyone had after the first film.

    Not in our catalog yet — we have not scored this one.
  5. 04

    Paranormal Activity 4 2012

    Dir. Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman · 88 min · IMDb 4.7 (74,709 votes)

    Back to the present day. The lowest-rated entry until the next one.

    Not in our catalog yet — we have not scored this one.
  6. 05

    Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones 2014

    Dir. Christopher Landon · 84 min · IMDb 5.1 (48,567 votes)

    A side-story with a mostly Latino cast in Oxnard, California — a real change of register, and it ties back into the original’s last night.

    Not in our catalog yet — we have not scored this one.
  7. 06

    Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension 2015

    Dir. Gregory Plotkin · 88 min · IMDb 4.6 (33,811 votes)

    Sold as the finale that explains everything. The lowest-rated film in the series.

    Not in our catalog yet — we have not scored this one.
  8. 07

    Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin 2021

    Dir. William Eubank · 98 min · IMDb 5.3 (20,802 votes)

    A six-year-later reboot on Paramount+ with a new story and no returning family. Rated higher than the three films before it.

    Not in our catalog yet — we have not scored this one.
What the red-edged entries mean. 1 of these 8 films is in the WhatScares catalog, scored separately for jump scares, gore and dread. The rest are listed with their IMDb figures only. We would rather say we have not rated a film than invent a number for it — our scores go into structured data that search engines republish, so a guess would be a claim.

Story order

Release order is the honest way to watch these — the found-footage conceit depends on you learning things in the order the films reveal them. But the story does have a chronology, and it is not the order they came out:

  1. Paranormal Activity 3 — set in 1988, the sisters as children
  2. Paranormal Activity 2 — begins shortly before the first film
  3. Paranormal Activity — the 2007 original
  4. Paranormal Activity 2 — again — its closing scenes fall after the original ends
  5. Paranormal Activity 4 — years later, the present day
  6. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones — runs alongside the modern films and loops back into the original
  7. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension — the intended finale

Next of Kin sits outside all of it. It shares no characters with the others, so it works as a standalone and it does not matter when you watch it.

Questions people actually ask

How many Paranormal Activity movies are there?
Eight have been released: the seven main-series films from 2007 to 2021, plus Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Night, a licensed Japanese spin-off released in 2010.
Which Paranormal Activity movie is the scariest?
We have scored the 2007 original: 4 out of 5 for jump scares, 1 out of 5 for gore, 3 out of 5 for dread. The rest of the series is not in our catalog yet, so we will not rank films we have not put a scorecard to. What the audience numbers say is unambiguous, though: the original is the best-rated at IMDb 6.3, and The Ghost Dimension is the lowest at 4.6.
What order should I watch the Paranormal Activity movies in?
Release order. The series withholds information on purpose, and the prequels are built to recontextualise what you already saw — watching in story order spoils the reveals the films are constructed around.
Do I need to watch all of them?
No. The first film stands entirely on its own, and it is the one the ratings favour by a wide margin. Paranormal Activity 3 is the sequel most often singled out as worth the time. Next of Kin shares no characters with any of them.
Is Paranormal Activity based on a true story?
No. The found-footage framing was a marketing device, not a documentary claim. The film is fiction, written and directed by Oren Peli.

Every film we rate gets three scores, not one. Jump scares, gore and dread are different things, and a film can be brutal on one and harmless on the other two. That is the whole idea behind WhatScares.

Search 323 films by what scares you The scariest movies, by the numbers →