Evil spirits are up to their old tricks in "The Marked Ones", and this time the action takes place in Oxnard, California, in a working-class Latino neighborhood, a welcome change in style and feel from the other more generic suburban installments. Jesse (Jacobs) and Hector (Diaz) live in a crowded apartment complex, with multigenerational family members crowded into small rooms. Both have just graduated from high school and seem to have no plans, no jobs, no goals. The only thing they have any interest in is fooling around with their new video camera. At first, they just film each other doing dumb stunts involving laundry baskets and staircases. Hector draws a penis on Jesse's face while he sleeps. Hilarity ensues. They do shots of tequila with Jesse's feisty grandmother (Renee Victor). The only reason this banal footage has any entertainment value is because of the two actors. Their energy together feels unselfconscious; it doesn't feel like acting. They seem like real boys, real friends.
Soon, the boys become curious about Anna (Gloria Sandoval), a downstairs neighbor. Weird moaning sounds and bumps come up through the grate at night. The boys attach the camera to a wire, lower it through the grate, and, to their amazement, observe frumpy Anna, in the nude, painting a red circle on the stomach of a gorgeous naked woman. Again, the "found footage" trope requires that you turn off your brain that pesters you with questions such as, "That apartment down there has four rooms. Why would those two naked ladies choose to stand in the exact spot where the camera can pick up the action through the grate?" The fact that what the boys observe is disturbingly ritualistic is erased by the reality of the real live boobs on display down there.
The jokes stop when Anna turns up dead.
Naturally, the boys have to break into her apartment (now a crime scene) in the middle of the night to investigate. Because, of course. There are some legitimate scares, although most of them are of the "It was just a cat!" variety. Jesse and Hector loop in one of Jesse's cousins, Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh). The three kids discover, sitting around one of those old low-tech electronic Simon devices one night (a fun throwback detail), that the device appears to be tapped into the paranormal spirits, acting like a Ouija board, answering "Yes" or "No" questions, to the astonishment of the three kids huddled around Simon. But then things become more serious. Jesse has a mysterious bite on his arm. People disappear. And yet, again and again, they sneak into Anna's apartment to continue their filmed investigation.
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