End credits: Back to the Future Part II, The Witch Hunter, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

I was about eight or nine when I first saw Back to the Future Part II, rented on VHS from the local independent rental store as we hadn’t yet seen the wonders of a blockbuster our northern town. Needless to say the 1989 vision of 2015 blew me away, and I spent the rest of the day zipping round on a cardboard hoverboard I’d made from a shoebox lid. Fast forward to actual 2015, I still want my hoverboard and, no, I will not accept those mini segway devices that have just been outlawed. Do they hover? Viral marketing and some very clever things with super cooled magnets have come close in the recent build up, but Zemeckis’s vision of the future is still a way away. So, in the absence of flying cars and skateboards, rehydrating pizza and Jaws 19, to celebrate Marty and Doc’s arrival, on 21 Oct the classic movie will be re-released in cinemas. So it’s not all bad. The effects may be dated and we may have surpassed some of the other technology imagined but otherwise it still stands as a great family adventure movie. You could also shell out $20.15 for a special bottle of Pepsi, as seen in the film, if you really want. Great Scott!

The Last Witch Hunter is a rather formulaic but well executed supernatural action film starring Vin Diesel and Rose Leslie (Ygritte from Game of Thrones) so get ready for plenty of, “You know nothin’ Vin Diesel” quotes. Following the regular tropes of the genre, an ancient witch hunter must battle a long time evil foe in the present, reluctantly aided by a beautiful female witch to save the world. While rather generic, adding a separate dream/fantasy reality The Last Witch Hunter is entertaining enough to forgive its borrowed ideas.

Finally, scraping the barrel for a sixth installment, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension takes the spooky found footage into the 3D realm. Yes, a found footage movie in 3D – don’t ask how that works especially since we see the old VHS camera it’s shot on. The camera in question can see the “ghost dimension” along with the inexplicable third one, making for plenty of visible spooks on screen, and in doing so diminishing what made the original movie actually haunting.

Mark Wheeler