Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin Ending Explained

By Kofi Outlaw

Paranormal Activity 7 (aka Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin) attempts to restart the groundbreaking found-footage franchise with a new chapter that takes the series back to its core mythos. Young Margot (Emily Bader) is an orphaned girl who finally makes contact with her family after a cousin reaches out to her through an ancestry website. Margot is inspired to make a documentary about her family reunion and travels with her documentary crew to a remote Amish-style community to learn more about her mother. As you may imagine, the happy homecoming doesn't turn out quite as happy (or safe) as Margot and her crew thought. 

(Warning: Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin SPOILERS Follow!)

The climactic act of Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin finally brings us back to the central premise of the series, which is dark cults using black magic rituals in order to mark young girls for possession by an evil demonic spirit. However, unlike the story of Katie and her sister Kristi in the original series, Next of Kin flips the formula around for a modern take. Instead of the possessed girls being the victims of satanic cults, the creepy rural community Margot comes home to is actually a cursed last line of defense between the human world and a particularly malevolent evil demon called "Ashmodeus," that can take possession of anyone he wishes to.  

As depicted in the dark church the town keeps in the woods, this community was tasked with staying vigilant and making great sacrifices to keep Ashmodeus from annihilating humanity. A line of women (Margot's family) are ritualistically spellbound by the town's white witch to contain the essence of Ashmodeus in their bodies, as they are the only "chosen ones" strong enough to keep the demon in one form. The possession meant each woman acting as the vessel is effectively erased by the demon's presence, as Margot discovers when she finally finds her mother, Sarah, in the hellish cavern deep below the town's church. 

In the final act of Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, Margot's cameraman Chris (Roland Buck III) and sound guy Dale (Dan Lippert) take on the brave mission to save the doomed girl. Chris goes down into the cavern and stops the white witch's preparation of Margot's body mid-ritual - he also brakes the magic seal that keeps Ashmodeus (in Sarah's body) at bay. The kids escape the cave alive but so does Ashmodeus.

Just as legends warned, when the ritual is broken and Ashmodeus emerges, the townspeople are thrown into violent madness, and slaughter one another. Margot and Chris manage to escape the massacre (Dale gets brutally killed by the demon), but the final shots of the movie prove this is a fleeting victory for the protagonists, at best.

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin Ending Explained

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 The final scene of Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin reveals that Margot's cousin Samuel (Henry Ayers-Brown) is possessed by Ashmodeus, after the demon seemingly died when demonic Sarah is killed. We see through police dashboard cameras as law enforcement officers arrive at the scene of the town massacre, only for Ashmodeus to force them to shoot themselves in the head with but a thought. The demon version of Samuel gets in a police car and starts to drive off, listening to classic music on the radio (presumably the last era of music it knew of as Sarah), headed out into the wide world as the end credits roll. 

 Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin has effectively set up a whole new franchise to come, based solely on the story of Margot and the demon (Ashmodeus) who is now presumably after her. There also is just as much potential for this new chapter to connect back to the previous storyline of the franchise, as Margot's attempt to stop Ashmodeus could quickly put her on the trail of Katie, Hunter, and those who have dealt with this kind of evil before. 

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is now streaming on Paramount+. 

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