Warning: Spoilers for Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin
Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is now on Paramount+, but what does the chaos of the ending entail for the series and how does it set up a sequel? Beginning with the first Paranormal Activity in 2009, the franchise came to haunt theaters every Halloween for the next several years, while also kickstarting a found-footage craze. By 2015, the franchise showed signs that the time had come for it to wrap up, with Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension then being the final chapter of the series, but Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin's ending shows the franchise isn't done yet.
After a six-year hiatus, the Paranormal Activity franchise is now back for more Halloween scares, with the newest chapter Next of Kin. The V/H/S franchise similarly made a comeback earlier in October with the Shudder debut of V/H/S/94. Both are bids to get their respective franchises rolling once more, and depending on the reception between them, it's possible another found footage resurgence could come about.
Despite mostly retaining the found footage format that is the series' signature, Next of Kin also departs from the franchise in other ways, with the lead character Margot (Emily Bader) filming a documentary on an Amish farm while uncovering her family roots. There's even a new demon involved this time, with a different mythos behind his role in the story. Here's what happens in the ending of Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin and how it sets up future Paranormal Activity movies.
The Cave Under The Church Explained
With Margot getting no real answers from the Beiler family about what happened to her mother Sarah, she takes matters into her own hands, snooping around the house late at night. In the Paranormal Activity 7 attic scene, she discovers a letter from Sarah to her that was never mailed. But there is clearly more happening on the farm than meets the eye when Margot and Chris (Roland Buck III) stumble upon a deep hole and tunnel on the grounds running about a hundred feet under the church. As she's lowered into the hole, Margo sees an assortment of religious symbols and hears strange noises at the bottom before Chris pulls her back up. The noises heard during her brief trip into the cavern indicate there's some kind of presence down in the cave, which is why Margot's grandfather and the Beiler family patriarch Father Jacob (Tom Nowicki) have declared it off-limits to the outside documentarians. Whatever happened to her mother, it's far greater than Margot realized.
What Happened To Margot (Why She Was Bleeding)
After the group elects to leave the Beiler farm the next morning, Margot is inexplicably attacked by an unseen presence late that night, specifically the movie's malevolent demon Asmodeus. Chris and Dale (Dan Lippert) find Margot in bed the next morning with blood covering her pelvic region. The local medic says she's suffering from fatigue and a harsh period of her menstrual cycle, but there's clearly a more supernatural explanation after her attack the previous night. That explanation is never explicitly spelled out. However, it definitely relates to Margot having been chosen by the Beiler family to become the demon's new human vessel, so it's perhaps an attempt by the demon to enter Margot's body and possess her before that can happen.
What Was Really Happening At The "Amish" Farm?
As Chris and Dale venture into town on foot to get a fresh battery for their car, they learn from a local postman that the Beilers are not actually an Amish family. After a bit of internet research, they also learn more about Asmodeus, whose symbol is seen in the church, setting him up as the successor to Paranormal Activity series' staple demonic entity, Toby. As a generational tradition, the Beilers perform a ritual to transfer Asmodeus into a new female host, to prevent the demon from being unleashed on the world to freely prey on humans. As it turns out, Margot comes from a long line of people whose women are cursed to be spellbound by the town's witch to be strong enough to hold Asmodeus and thus keep him somewhat contained.
The Beilers have chosen Margot as the new host for Asmodeus, as her mother before her, having strategically lured her to the farm with correspondence seemingly from Samuel (Henry Ayres-Brown) that was actually facilitated by Father Jacob. The cave beneath the church is also more than it seems, intended as an unholy ground for the ritualized possession to take place. In a twisted way, the Beilers aren't the monsters of Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, but its heroes. They are revealed to be the last line of defense against Asmodeus breaking out; the town and its people have been the only thing standing between humanity and Asmodeus for ages. Unfortunately, the greater good means one woman from each generation in Margot's family is condemned to a hellish end as they are subsumed and wholly erased once they become Asmodeus' new vessel.
How Paranormal Activity 7 Ends
When Dale and Chris return to the farm amid a chilly blizzard, the demonic ritual to transfer the demon Asmodeus into the body of Margot is already underway, a ritual scene that is unique from previous Paranormal Activity movies. After a struggle with Jacob. Chris rappels down and manages to stop the ritual from being completed. Unfortunately, Asmodeus has already been summoned and pursues Margot and Chris as they're pulled back up by Dale, who just misses making it to the end of Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin when he's killed by the demon. To her horror, Margot realizes what has happened to her mother, Sarah: she is the current host of the demon. Margot manages to make peace with the being long enough to push Asmodeus in her mother's body from the second floor of the barn into a wood-chipper. Margot and Chris then flee the farm after retrieving the car keys from Dale.
The Arrival Of The Police
After Paranormal Activity 7's surviving lead characters presumably contact the police about everything that happened, a pair of local cops arrive to find the farm burning and bodies strew across the snowy property. As one cop enters the barn (the footage captured on his body cam), he finds a shirtless and seemingly terrified Samuel with blood on his upper chest. Samuel appears to comply with the officer's demand that he keep his hands up, but suddenly grows calm and the officer puts his gun to his own head and pulls the trigger. As it turns out, Asmodeus was not destroyed by being pushed into the wood-chipper, but freed from his shackles. It's something Margot should have understood considering that the entire point was that Asmodeus needs a spelled human vessel in order to remain contained; if that special vessel is destroyed, Asmodeus is unbound and free to possess whomever he wants. Clearly, the next body he found was Samuel, who exits the barn as the new host of Asmodeus before telepathically forcing the second officer to also shoot himself in the head. Samuel then commandeers the squad car, departing the farm and driving off to an unknown destination as the credits begin.
How Paranormal Activity 7 Sets Up A Sequel
With Samuel the new vessel for Asmodeus at the end of Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, future installments of the spooky Paranormal Activity franchise will presumably involve him as a demonic force haunting new characters. The seemingly telepathic power he displays in forcing the two cops to shoot themselves seems to suggest that the supernatural abilities of Asmodeus extend beyond whoever he is immediately possessing. The full scope of the kind of power Asmodeus wields as the demon possessing Samuel will probably factor into future Paranormal Activity movies.
It also syncs the movie up just a bit with The Ghost Dimension, which displayed the endgame of Toby's human followers as providing him with a human host to inhabit. The Beiler family seems to have had a similar goal in mind with Asmodeus, albeit with the intent of the host being a woman and spellbound for the purpose of keeping Asmodeus from being able to freely prey on the world. Paranormal Activity 6 had an ending sequel setup, too, and this could mean that Toby and Asmodeus might theoretically cross paths as a demonic duo in future Paranormal Activity movies.
Additionally, Margot and Chris are also rare examples of leading characters who survive by the end of a horror movie, which could bring them back into series later. Molly Ephraim's Ali Rey also wasn't killed in Paranormal Activity 2, and later returned in Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, at that point having become something of an expert on demonology and on the rituals of The Midwives, the coven of witches seen in Paranormal Activity 3. With Ali, Margot, and Chris now having all survived demonic encounters, the three could hypothetically meet in the next Paranormal Activity, Margot and Chris now possibly joining Ali as authorities on demons and possession after surviving their encounter with Asmodeus in Parnormal Activity 7's ending for more movies in the found-footage horror franchise.
The Ending Twist Explained — What Happened To The Beiler Farm
In the carnage of Parnormal Activity 7's ending, large sections of the Beiler farm are set ablaze while the family descends into a frenzy of violence, Margot and Chris doing their best to avoid them as they escape the farm. The now Asmodeus-possessed Samuel is seemingly the last surviving member of the Beiler family. Not only does he leave the farm abandoned when he departs in the squad car, but Asmodeus might've left a door to Hell open behind him.
With the ritual to transfer Asmodeus into a new host being held in the cave beneath the church, it suggested in Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin that it acts as some kind of supernatural gateway, or perhaps prison, in the Beilers' containment rituals. The title of the next film in the franchise, Paranormal Activity 8: The Other Side, could explore that idea further. Now that Asmodeus is occupying a new host in Samuel and roaming freely, the shackles of his ritualized transfer to containment hosts seem to have been lifted from him. Furthermore, with the Beilers erupting into madness and violently attacking each other and themselves in the ending, the doorway Asmodeus came through might now be open for more demons like him to be set loose on the world. After Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, more such demons could now be joining Asmodeus in the franchise's future.